Pimpinan KEADILAN mengamati situasi perjalanan Pemilihan parti yang telah berjalan tiga minggu berturut-turut dengan cukup serius. Seperti yang telah disebut dalam sidang media saya sebelum ini, sekiranya ada isu cacat cela dalam proses pengundian – termasuk penipuan, gangsterisme, dan disiplin – maka siasatan penuh wajib dijalankan dan tindakan disiplin harus diambil. Harus ditegaskan bahawa JPP dan Lembaga Disiplin KEADILAN telah diarah supaya tidak melindungi mana-mana anggota pun.
Semalam kita telah saksikan seramai lapan anggota KEADILAN yang telah digantung keanggotaan bagi membantu siasatan berkaitan Pemilihan parti, dan saya difahamkan Lembaga Disiplin kini bermesyuarat setiap hari bagi mempercepat proses siasatan.
Pada masa yang sama, saya telah meminta ketiga-tiga calon Timbalan Presiden KEADILAN untuk bersama saya pagi ini mewakili kesemua anggota KEADILAN memberi sokongan penuh kepada JPP untuk terus bergerak dan menambahbaik proses pemilihan parti.
Pimpinan KEADILAN amat prihatin tentang insiden kekerasan dan gangsterisme yang berlaku, terutamanya sewaktu proses pengundian di Selangor. Berdasarkan maklumat yang diterima serta bukti video dan foto, didapati terdapat elemen bukan anggota parti yang telah menceroboh pusat-pusat pengundian dengan niat memburukkan imej parti dan menggagalkan proses pengundian. Saya juga difahamkan ramai daripada elemen-elemen ini telah masuk KEADILAN sejurus sebelum daftar pemilih ditutup dan disahkan pada 15 Mac yang lalu. Oleh yang demikian, pimpinan KEADILAN telah mengarahkan JPP dan Lembaga Disiplin untuk menyiasat perkara ini dengan lebih lanjut dan tindakan disiplin yang cukup keras mesti diambil, bagi memastikan elemen-elemen ini dibanteras dan dibuang dari parti.
15 Mei 2014 REMBAU – Pengguna jalan utama Seremban-Tampin, dekat Pedas, di sini memohon pihak berkaitan mempertimbangkan semula had laju ditetapkan di kawasan berkenaan. Tinjauan Sinar Harian ke lokasi berkenaan mendapati, beberapa papan tanda had laju iaitu 50 kilometer sejam (50km/j) didirikan di laluan selekoh berkenaan berbanding had laju sebenar bagi jalan persekutuan iaitu 90km/j.
"Laluan berkenaan membenarkan had laju sekitar 50km/j sedangkan had laju berkenaan agak sukar untuk dipatuhi kerana agak perlahan dan pengguna jalan raya terpaksa menekan brek melalui kawasan berkenaan untuk mengelak kemungkinan disaman.
"Ada juga pengguna yang memandu sekitar 60km/j dan turut dikenakan saman. Jadi saya harap agar pihak berkaitan dapat mempertimbangkan permohonan untuk menaikkan had laju iaitu 70km/j di kawasan berkenaan," katanya ketika ditemui di lokasi berkenaan, semalam.
Peniaga, Yau Ho Huat, 60, memberitahu, kenalannya juga terkejut apabila mendapat surat saman sebulan lalu kerana memandu dengan had laju sekitar 70km/j.
"Tentu sahajalah rakan saya terkejut kerana tidak menyangka had laju di kawasan itu hanya sekitar 50km/j. Malah, jika di Pekan Pedas pun had lajunya adalah sekitar 70km/j.
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Saya ingin memberi reaksi serangan terbaru Dr Mahathir ke atas Anwar Ibrahim seperti dilapor Bernama bertarikh 14 Mei 2014. Saya kira Dr Mahathir melatah lagi.
Kali ini beliau menyerang Anwar Ibrahim kerana dijemput menyampaikan syarahan di Universiti Al-Azhar, Jakarta Indonesia. Bahkan penganjur yang menjemput Anwar juga diserang Dr Mahathir.
Kata Dr Mahathir, Anwar tidak layak menyampaikan syarahan tentang Islam kerana moralnya rendah!
Izinkan saya menceritakan kepada Dr Mahathir yang mudah lupa, lama sebelum Anwar berkawan dengan Dr Mahathir, Anwar sudah pun mengenali dan berguru dengan Dr Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Dr Ismail Faruqi, Dr Sheikh Taha Jabir Al-Awani, Pak Natsir, Pak Hamka, Sheikh Hassan Turabi, Dr Rashid Ghanoushi, Sheik Mehdi Aqif dan ramai lagi.
Anwar terlibat dengan gerakan Islam sejak zaman sekolah, mahasiswa, belia dan tidak pernah bersara hingga hari ini.
Tokoh-tokoh ilmuan dan gerakan Islam seantero dunia seperti Dr Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Dr Wahbah Zuhaily, Dr Abu Hamid Sulaiman, Dr Ahmad Totonji, Dr Tariq Suwaidan dan Dr Tariq Ramadan sentiasa mengunjungi Anwar setiap kali mereka berkesempatan datang ke Malaysia berbincang isu-isu umat sejagat.
Biarlah saya mengingatkan Dr Mahathir walau bersungguh-sungguh beliau berusaha untuk membunuh karakter Anwar dengan fitnah liwat selama lebih 15 tahun, fitnah jijik itu tidak mampu menjauhkan tokoh-tokoh ilmuan Islam daripada Anwar.
Kalau Dr Mahathir ingin tahu apa sebabnya, jawapannya cukup terang. Islam melarang dan mengharamkan seorang muslim memfitnah saudara muslimnya yang lain dengan fitnah zina atau liwat.
Dr Mahathirlah yang mereka fitnah liwat terhadap Anwar.
Mangsa fitnah
Namun Dr Mahathir tidak pernah berupaya menampilkan empat saksi sepertimana yang Al-Quran wajibkan. Rakan-rakan Anwar dari kalangan tokoh-tokoh Ilmuan Islam ini terus mendokong Anwar kerana kayu ukur mereka ialah Al Quran. Keyakinan mereka ialah Anwar menjadi mangsa fitnah jahat Dr Mahathir.
Dr Mahathir sewaktu menjadi Perdana Menteri memperalatkan seluruh jentera pemerintah termasuk media, polis, peguam negara dan mahkamah untuk melengkapkan fitnahnya terhadap Anwar. Dipenjarakan tujuh tahun, bebas dan Anwar terus berjuang.
Apakah Dr Mahathir berhasil "membunuh" Anwar? Tidak sama sekali!
Kalau dahulu ketika masih berkuasa Dr Mahathir boleh sahaja menyekat dan memenjarakan Anwar. Hari ini pun kerajaan Umno/ BN boleh terus menyekat Anwar menyampaikan syarahan di universiti-universiti awam dan swasta di negara kita.
Kerajaan Umno/BN malah boleh mengugut mahasiswa-mahasiswa Malaysia di luar negara agar jangan mengikuti syarahan Anwar.
Namun Dr Mahathir dan kerajaan Umno/BN tidak boleh menyekat universiti-universiti terkemuka di rantau ASEAN, di Eropah, di Amerika Syarikat dan di Timur Tengah dari terus mengundang Anwar. Anwar sering dijemput mengupas pelbagai tajuk menyentuh persoalan umat Islam dan dunia seluruhnya.
Saya pernah berpergian bersama Anwar ketika beliau diundang menyampaikan syarahan di Mesir, Turki, Singapura, Indonesia dan banyak negara-negara lain. Siapa yang hadir mengikuti syarahan Anwar?
Untuk makluman Dr Mahathir, mereka ialah menteri-menteri, tokoh-tokoh pemikir dan sarjana Islam, golongan korporat, pimpinan media, professor universiti, tokoh-tokoh ekonomi dan teknokrat.
Di Tunisia misalnya Dr Rashid Ghanoushi menjemput Anwar menyampaikan pandangannya kepada seluruh ahli-ahli parlimen dan anggota jemaah menteri Tunisia.
Kupas topik Islam
Di Turki, Perdana Menteri Tayyib Erdogan menjemput Anwar berucap di Istana Presiden mengupas topik Islam dan kebangkitan dunia arab.
Satu ketika di Mesir seingat saya pada 2010, Anwar dijemput menyampaikan ucaputama persidangan antarabangsa Islam dan Demokrasi.
Di Singapura, bertempat di World Trade Center, ucapan Anwar pula ditujukan kepada tokoh-tokoh media dunia.
Di Indonesia pengaruh Anwar bukan kepalang. Seorang teman saya asal Bogor pernah bergurau, katanya tokoh-tokoh Indonesia saling berselisih dan berbeda pendapat antara satu sama lain, namun mereka boleh sahaja bersatu kalau mengkagumi Anwar.
Pesantren, universiti, badan-badan pemikir dan intelektual Indonesia sering mengundang Anwar menyampaikan pidatonya.
Anwar boleh berbicara karangan Shakespeare, Confucius, Mohamad Iqbal, Rabindranth Tagore, Jose Rizal atau mendeklamasi puisi Rendra.
Pada masa yang sama Anwar giat mempelopori maqasid syariah dan membentang kertas seminar Islam dan demokrasi di serata dunia.
Tidaklah menghairankan sebaik keluar dari penjara Anwar dilantik sebagai fellow di Universiti Oxford dan menjadi professor di Universiti New Hopkins Amerika Syarikat.
Anwar juga dilantik penasihat ekonomi Qatar dan beberapa institusi perbankan di negara arab.
Bunuh karekter
Elok juga saya mengingatkan Dr Mahathir bahawa Anwar yang cuba dibunuh karakternya oleh Dr Mahathir cuma manusia biasa. Hormat orang kepadanya bersebab. Fitnah Dr Mahathir hanya "berhasil" di dalam kalangan Umno. Itupun bukan semua.
Ramai kenalan saya di dalam Umno yang kini menduduki jawatan-jawatan utama dalam parti dan kerajaan mengakui hakikat ini. Cuma yang tiada pada mereka ialah keberanian untuk berkata benar di hadapan pemimpin pencipta fitnah.
Bagaimana sebenarnya Dr Mahathir mahu dingati? Berkuasa selama dua puluh tiga tahun legasi yang ditinggalkannya ialah merosakkan institusi kehakiman, menekan kebebasan media, menyuburkan budaya rasuah, memunggah kekayaan negara menjadi kekayaan peribadi, memusuhi institusi raja-raja Melayu dan berkekalan memusuhi ulama.
Ketika Anwar masih terus dengan tradisi ilmu dan rapat dengan Dr Yusof Qardawi, Dr Tariq Suwaidan, Dr Wahbah Zuhaily, Dr Mahathir pula rapat dengan Ananda Krishna, Francis Yeoh dan Syed Mokhtar Bukhary.
Ketika anak-anak Anwar membesar dan membina kerjaya yang cukup sederhana, Dr Mahathir pula cemerlang membantu anak-anaknya mencipta nama tergolong kelompok mahakaya di Malaysia!
Ketika Anwar terus berjuang membela rakyat, menolak politik perkauman, mengajak rakyat mencari titik persaudaraan, menuntut kekayaan negara diagih secara adil, Dr Mahathir pula kekal dengan gaya politik lama, usang, tidak pernah puas menimbun kekayaan dan penuh dendam kesumat.
Saksikanlah pada usia lebih 80-an tahun Dr Mahathir terus menyerang Anwar tanpa henti. Tidak pernah ada tanda-tanda beliau sedar dan insaf perbuatan fitnahnya terhadap Anwar. Pesanan buat Dr Mahathir, sesungguhnya Allah swt menyayangi hamba-hambanya yang sentiasa bertaubat dan membersihkan diri.
Sebaliknya Allah juga bencikan orang yang tidak mahu bertaubat dan paling dibenci-Nya ialah orang tua yang tidak mahu bertaubat. Doa saya agar Dr Mahathir tidak tergolong dalam kalangan jenis itu dan dibuka pintu hatinya. Amin ya Rabb.
Seremban 15 Mei 2014 - Dua biarawati yang diserang di kawasan gereja Seremban awal pagi semalam dipukul dengan topi keledar sebelum dirompak, kata seorang biara. Biara yang tidak mahu dikenali itu berkata Sister Juliana Lim, 60, dan Mary-Rose, 80 dipercayai diserang oleh sekurang-kurangnya dua orang menggunakan topi keledar untuk memukul mangsanya.
Juliana masih lagi dalam koma dan dikatakan dalam keadaan kritikal. Dia juga bernafas dengan respirator.
Biara itu mengatakan Mary-Rose mendedahkan penyerang mereka menggunakan topi keledar untuk memukul mereka sebelum merampas beg mereka yang mengandungi Bible, buku doa, tasbih dan sedikit wang.
Kedua-dua mangsa tiba di gereja Church of the Visitation di Jalan Yam Tuan kira-kira pukul 6.15 pagi, di dalam kereta bersama dua orang lagi biara untuk menghadiri perhimpunan pagi.
Dua lagi biara pergi ke bahagian luar gereja sementara Juliana dan Mary-Rose berjalan ke pintu utama di mana mereka dipercayai diserang.
Beberapa minit kemudian, kedua-dua mereka dijumpai terlentang di tangga pintu utama oleh penjaga gereja yang datang membuka pintu.
It is very rare for the Left to have a best-seller but we have one now. The French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is currently being both widely read and even more widely discussed. That is great news. The question it leaves us with is how to put all that reading and discussion to best use.
My suggestion is that we capitalize on this rare moment of clarity on the true sources of contemporary inequality by placing the Picketty thesis at the core of a wider argument on the need for a managed capitalism. We need that progressive argument now — and we need it disseminated widely in the run-up to the mid-term elections — because of the equally wide dissemination around us of its obverse: namely the libertarian and conservative counter-assertion that markets work best when regulated least.
The standard line for a fully deregulated set of capitalist markets goes something like this.
There is no need to regulate capitalism because, left to themselves, capitalist markets are the great drivers of human progress. Unregulated markets not only generate economic growth, as recent history so clearly demonstrates. They also allocate scarce resources in an entirely optimal way. Prices in unregulated markets educate consumers, trigger entrepreneurial activity and set in motion Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” — the one that leads entrepreneurs to benefit society without planning to do so. Interference in such markets by well-meaning governments only distorts those optimal settlement points. Heavy taxation discourages enterprise. Labour laws create unemployment; and bailing out the weak only penalizes the strong. Letting the market decide is more than economic common sense. It is also the quintessential American way of doing business. Let Europeans regulate markets if they must, but don’t bring those European weaknesses to this side of the Atlantic.
So what does the Piketty argument do to that general case?
• Debunking core claims It blows a huge hole in the central libertarian and conservative claim about optimal allocation. Conventional economics would have us believe that unregulated markets can be expected to reduce income and wealth inequalities over time. Piketty, by contrast, demonstrates that, without political intervention, unequal societies are likely to become more unequal rather than less. That is particularly so, he argues, in periods of slow economic growth of the sort we have witnessed in advanced capitalist economies since the 1970s; for in those periods, when the rate of return on capital and the rate of economic growth both diminish, the latter slows much more dramatically than the former. As he recently put it:
“Beyond education and income factors, history tells us that, in the long run, the most powerful force pushing in the direction of rising inequality is the tendency of the rate of return to capital (r) to exceed the rate of output growth (g). When r exceeds g, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, initial wealth inequalities tend to amplify and to converge towards extreme levels.”
The Piketty data suggests that inequality in contemporary capitalism is now at such a level that ordinary market processes no longer apply. Instead the trend is otherwise: “The past tends to devour the future: society inexorably tends towards dominance by inherited wealth.” So just because healthy competition requires some degree of inequality, there is no reason to claim that for reasons of competitiveness we must tolerate whatever level of inequality happens to prevail. If Piketty is right, too much inequality is as damaging to long-term economic health as too little.
• Perfect & Imperfect Competition The data-sets in the Picketty volume are new and extremely valuable, but the basic argument that they sustain has its own long and well-established pedigree. It has long been recognized by critics of market deregulation that only under the very special circumstances of perfect competition do capitalist markets perform in the optimal way claimed for them by their advocates. Unregulated markets work in that optimal way only when the economy is entirely composed of small firms competing with each other in sectors that are easy for new firms to enter. And unregulated markets only work in an optimal way in economies in which no one firm is capable of affecting prices in the market by its actions alone. But modern capitalist markets are rarely of that kind; and when they are, the competitive processes that go on within them invariably move them away from such perfect competitiveness. Markets necessarily generate both winners and losers. As the winners get bigger and the losers smaller relative to each other, perfect competition between them becomes necessarily imperfect in character unless those markets are managed back into competitiveness. No matter how often it is asserted otherwise, market competition rarely works in the manner of Adam Smith’s invisible hand; and it does so only if, and to the degree that, periodically the invisible hand is itself given some externally-generated assistance.
• Arguments for market regulation Nor is anti-monopoly policy of itself enough for progressive purposes, for unregulated markets do more than generate structurally-embedded inequalities of wealth of the Piketty variety. They also suffer from a basic fallacy of composition. In unregulated markets, action that is rational for the individual firm is not necessarily rational for the economic system as a whole. That is why there is an environmental case for market regulation. Unless markets are regulated, there is no incentive for firms to factor in the costs of pollution. That is also why there is a Keynesian argument for market regulation. Cutting wages for competitive advantage works for individual firms, but if all firms cut wages simultaneously they open a race to the bottom that leaves each of them short of consumers with money to spend. That is also why there is a labor market argument for market regulation. Successful firms growing larger gain market power not only over their competitors but also over their employees. Unless trade unions can establish minimum standards of wages and conditions, there is nothing in unregulated markets that blocks off sweat-shop routes to immediate profitability. And that is why there is always a democratic argument for market regulation. Because unregulated markets produce losers as well as winners, they eventually settle at points of economic optimality which are not automatically socially optimal. Their minimum standards and ours are not automatically the same.
• The moral limits to markets Moreover, it is simply not the case that everything produced and consumed in modern economies can safely be left for allocation to unregulated market forces. There are moral limits to markets that everyone recognizes, limits that have to be imposed from outside, since ultimately the only morality an unregulated market recognizes is that of the jungle. Morality in unregulated markets lies with the victor in the perennial competitive struggle between demand and supply. Yet there are things which any civilized person recognizes are not suitable for allocation in that manner. In modern America, it isn’t legal to sell people any more. We don’t allow small children to work when they should be at school. We don’t think people should be allowed to starve simply because disabilities of age, illness or infirmity exclude them from labor markets. And in modern America, most of us don’t think that every good or service available to us should be freely sold. Instead, we implicitly agree that a list of exceptions to market mechanisms is required while we explicitly disagree – often intensely — about what that list ought to contain. For some, at the top of that list ought to be abortions. For others, it ought to be drugs. For many more, it ought to be health care itself. But clearly, for all the sharp disagreement on detail, all of us recognize that some limits to unregulated market processes are required. So the one thing that is illegitimate in the political conversation between us is the anger that many libertarians project back at progressives for having the audacity to propose market limits at all. It is not that progressives are out to destroy America — or God forbid, Europeanize America — by proposing that certain market outcomes need to be amended by public policy. It is simply that different ways of understanding how modern economies work produce different sets of policy proposals for their greater success.
With inequality at the levels they currently occupy in contemporary America, unregulated markets lock most individuals onto self-fulfilling trajectories of wealth or poverty. A particularly fortunate or gifted individual might break away from the poverty into which he/she was born, but for the mass and generality of us, the reality is that we have to strive endlessly just to stand still. As Thomas Piketty’s colleague Emmanuel Saez has recently demonstrated, since 2008, the richest 1 percent have taken a remarkable 95 percent of the new income and wealth generated by the collective efforts of us all, in the process locking the economy onto a low growth trajectory that over time excludes more and more of us from the core claim of the American Dream. What is that core claim: namely that through hard work, Americans can achieve a higher living standard as adults than they enjoyed as children. It is time to un-wrap the flag placed around unregulated markets by their libertarian and conservative advocates, and to wrap it instead around a progressive program of managed markets. It is time to advocate again a genuinely American New Deal that uses tax policy to break cycles of poverty and deprivation, and public spending to trigger the return of strong middle class jobs anchored in prosperous American-based businesses.
Outside satellite experts say investigators could be looking in the wrong ocean.
Investigators searching for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight were ebullient when they detected what sounded like signals from the plane's black boxes. This was a month ago, and it seemed just a matter of time before the plane was finally discovered.
Even before the black-box search turned up empty, observers had begun to raise doubts about whether searchers were looking in the right place. Authorities have treated the conclusion that the plane crashed in the ocean west of Australia as definitive, owing to a much-vaunted mathematical analysis of satellite signals sent by the plane. But scientists and engineers outside of the investigation have been working to verify that analysis, and many say that it just doesn't hold up.
A Global Game of Marco Polo
Malaysia Airlines flights are equipped with in-flight communications services provided by the British company Inmarsat. From early on, the lynchpin of the investigation has been signals sent by Flight 370 to one of Inmarsat's satellites. It's difficult to overstate the importance of this lonely little batch of "pings." They're the sole evidence of what happened to the plane after it slipped out of radar contact. Without them, investigators knew only that the plane had enough fuel to travel anywhere within 3,300 miles of the last radar contact—a seventh of the entire globe.
Although Inmarsat officials have described the mathematical analysis as "groundbreaking," it's actually based on some relatively straightforward geometry. Here's how it works: Every so often (usually about once an hour), Inmarsat's satellite sends a message to the plane's communication system, asking for a simple response to show that it's still switched on. This response doesn't specify the plane's location or the direction it’s heading, but it does have some useful information that narrows down the possibilities.
You can think of the ping math like a game of Marco Polo played over 22,000 miles of outer space. You can't see the plane. But you shout Marco, and the plane shouts back Polo. Based on how long the plane takes to respond, you know how far away it is. And from the pitch of its voice, you can tell whether it's moving toward you or away from you—like the sound of a car on the highway—and about how fast.
This information is far from perfect. You know how far the plane was for each ping, but the ping could be coming from any direction. And you how fast the plane is moving toward or away from you. It could also be moving right or left, up or down, and the speeds would sound the same. The task of the Inmarsat engineers has been to take these pieces and put them together, working backwards to reconstruct possible flight paths that would fit the data.
What's the Frequency?
There are two relevant pieces of information for each ping: the time it took to travel from plane to satellite, and the radio frequency at which it was received. It's important to keep in mind that the transit times of the pings correspond todistances between satellite and plane, while frequencies correspond to relative speeds between satellite and plane. And this part's critical: Relative speed isn't the plane's actual airspeed, just how fast it's moving toward or away from the satellite.
Authorities haven't released much information about the distances—just the now-famous "two arcs" graphic, derived in part from the distance of the very last ping. But they've released much more information about the ping frequencies. In fact, they released a graph that shows all of them:
Inmarsat
This graph is the most important piece of evidence in the Inmarsat analysis. What it appears to show is the frequency shifts or "offsets"—the difference between the normal "pitch" of the plane's voice (its radio frequency) and the one you actually hear.
The graph also shows the shifts that would be expected for two hypothetical flight paths, one northbound and one southbound, with the measured values closely matching the southbound path. This is why officials have been so steadfastly confident that the plane went south. It seems to be an open-and-shut verdict of mathematics.
So it should be straightforward to make sure that the math is right. That's just what a group of analysts outside the investigation has been attempting to verify. The major players have been Michael Exner, founder of the American Mobile Satellite Corporation; Duncan Steel, a physicist and visiting scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center; and satellite technology consultant Tim Farrar. They've used flight and navigation software like STK, which allows you to chart and make precise calculations about flight scenarios like this one. On their blogs and in an ongoing email chain, they've been trying to piece together the clues about Flight 370 and make sense of Inmarsat's analysis. What follows is an attempt to explain and assess their conclusions.
What We Know
Although the satellite data provides the most important clues about the plane's overall flight path, they're not the only clues available. Authorities have some basic but crucial additional information about the flight that can help to make sense of the satellite math:
1. The satellite's precise coordinates
The satellite in contact with Flight 370 was Inmarsat's IOR satellite, parked in geostationary orbit above the Indian Ocean. The satellite is meant to be stationary, but its orbit has decayed somewhat, so that it actually rotates slightly around its previously fixed position. Its path is publicly available from the Center for Space Standards & Innovation.
3. The plane's general motion toward or away from the satellite
From radar tracking, we know the plane traveled northeast, away from the satellite, over the first 40 minutes after takeoff, then westward, toward the satellite, until 94 minutes into the flight, when it was last detected on radar. Inmarsat spokesmen have stated that the ping distances got progressively longer over the last five hours of flight, meaning that the plane was moving away from the satellite during that time.
4. Two flight paths investigators think are consistent with the ping data
In addition to the frequency shift graph, the Inmarsat report includes a map with two "Example Southern Tracks," one assuming a flight speed of 400 knots, the other a speed of 450 knots. Check it out:
Inmarsat
These bits of knowledge allow us to put some basic constraints on what a graph of the ping frequency shifts should look like. We'll use more precise numbers later; for now, it's helpful just to have some qualitative sense of what to expect:
5. Frequency shifts that should all be negative
When the plane is moving away from the satellite, the radio signal gets stretched out, so the frequency decreases. This means that the frequency shifts should be negative over most of the flight. Although there was an approximately one-hour period starting 40 minutes after takeoff when radar showed the plane moving westward, toward the satellite, the graph shows that no pings were sent during that time—so actually, all of the shifts on the graph should be negative.
6. Frequency shifts before takeoff that should be near zero
Plotting the satellite's path in STK, you can see that it moves through an ellipse centered around the equator. Space scientist Steel has created this graphic of the satellite's motion, including marks for its position when the plane took off and when it last pinged the satellite:
The satellite's motion is almost entirely north-south, and the plane's takeoff location in Kuala Lumpur is almost due east of the satellite. This means that the satellite was only barely moving relative to Kuala Lumpur, so the frequency shift for a plane nearly stationary on the ground at the airport would be nearly zero.
7. Frequency shift graph should match map of southbound flight paths
The way the Marc-Polo math works is that, if you assume the plane traveled at some constant speed, you can produce at most one path north and one path south that fit the ping data. As the example flight paths on Inmarsat's map show, the faster you assume the plane was moving overall, the more sharply the path must arc away from the satellite.
This constraint also works the other way: Since flight paths for a given airspeed are unique, you can work backwards from these example paths, plotting them in STK to get approximate values for the ping distances and relative speeds Inmarsat used to produce them. The relative speeds can then be converted into frequency shifts, which should roughly match the values on the frequency graph. (This is all assuming that Inmarsat didn't plot the two example paths at random but based on the ping data.) We'll put more precise numbers on this below.
The Troubled Graph
But the graph defies these expectations. Taken at face value, the graph shows the plane moving at a significant speed before it even took off, then movingtoward the satellite every time it was pinged. This interpretation is completely at odds with the official conclusion, and flatly contradicted by other evidence.
The first problem seems rather straightforward to resolve: the reason the frequency shifts aren't negative is probably that Inmarsat just graphed them as positive. Plotting absolute values is a common practice among engineers, like stating the distance to the ocean floor as a positive depth value rather than a negative elevation value.
But the problem of the large frequency shift before takeoff is more vexing. Exactly how fast does the graph show the plane and satellite moving away from each other prior to takeoff?
The first ping on the graph was sent at 16:30 UTC, eleven minutes prior to takeoff. The graphed frequency shift for this ping is about -85 Hz. Public recordsshow that the signal from the plane to the satellite uses a frequency of 1626 to 1660 MHz. STK calculations show the satellite's relative motion was just 2 miles per hour toward the airport at this time. Factoring in the satellite's angle above the horizon, the plane would need to have been moving at least 50 miles per hour on the ground to produce this frequency shift—implausibly high eleven minutes prior to takeoff, when flight transcripts show the plane had just pushed back from the gate and not yet begun to taxi.
On the other side of the frequency graph, the plane's last ping, at 00:11 UTC, shows a measured frequency shift of about -252 Hz, working out to a plane-to-satellite speed of just 103 miles per hour. But the sample southbound paths published by Inmarsat show the plane receding from the satellite at about 272 miles per hour at this time.
In other words, the frequency shifts are much higher than they should be at the beginning of the graph, and much lower than they should be at the end. Looking at the graph, it's almost as if there's something contributing to these frequency shift values other than just the motion between the satellite and the plane.
Cracking the ‘Doppler Code’
Exner, an engineer who's developed satellite and meteorology technologies since the early 1970s, noted that the measured frequency shifts might come not just from each ping's transmission from plane to satellite, but also from the ping's subsequent transmission from the satellite to a ground station that connects the satellites into the Inmarsat network. In other words, Exner may have found the hidden source that seems to be throwing off the frequency graph.
Inmarsat's analysis is highly ambiguous about whether the satellite-to-ground transmission contributed to the measured frequency shift. But if it did, a ground station located significantly south of the satellite would have resulted in frequency shifts that could account for the measured shifts being too large at the beginning of the graph and too small at the end. And sure enough, Inmarsat's analysis states that the ground station receiving the transmission was located in Australia.
It's possible to check the theory more precisely. Public records of Inmarsat ground stations show just one in Australia: in Perth. Using STK, you can precisely chart the satellite's speed relative to this station, and, using thesatellite-to-ground signal frequency (about 3.6 GHz), you can then factor the satellite-to-ground shifts out of the frequency graph. Finally, you can at last calculate the true satellite-to-plane speed values.
The results seem to be nearly perfect. For the first ping, you wind up with a satellite-to-plane speed of about 1 mile per hour—just what you'd expect for a plane stationary or slowly taxiing eleven minutes before takeoff. This finding seems to provide a basic sanity check for interpreting the graph, and led Exner to declare on Twitter, "Doppler code cracked." He produced a new graph of the frequency shifts, shown below. The gently sloping blue line shows the shifts between the satellite and the ground station in Perth, while the dotted red line shows the newly calculated satellite-to-plane shifts:
Michael Exner
Why Inmarsat's Analysis Is Probably Wrong
If this interpretation—based on the work of Exner, Steel, Farrar, and myself—is correct, it would allow independent experts to fully review Inmarsat's analysis, verify its work and check to see if Inmarsat might have missed any important clues that could further narrow down the plane's whereabouts.
The problem is, although this interpretation matches two basic expectations for the frequency graph, it still doesn't match Inmarsat's example flight paths. The new frequency values, calculated by Exner, show the flight's speed relative to the satellite as only about 144 miles per hour by the last ping, but Inmarsat's example flight paths show a relative speed of about 272 miles per hour.
It's possible these outside experts have still erred or missed some crucial detail in their attempts to understand the Inmarsat analysis. But that just means that Inmarsat's analysis, as it has been presented, remains deeply confusing, or perhaps deeply confused. And there are other reasons to believe that Inmarsat's analysis is not just unclear but mistaken. (Inmarsat stands by its analysis. More on that in a minute.)
Recall that the Marco-Polo math alone doesn't allow you to tell which direction pings are coming from. So how could Inmarsat claim to distinguish between a northern and southern path at all? The reason is that the satellite itself wasn't stationary. Because the satellite was moving north-south, it would have been moving faster toward one path than another—specifically, faster toward a southbound track than a northbound one over the last several hours of the flight. This means that the frequency shifts would also differ between a northbound and southbound path, as the graph shows with its two predicted paths.
But this is actually where the graph makes the least sense. The graph only shows different predicted values for the north and south tracks beginning at 19:40 UTC (presumably Inmarsat's model used actual radar before this). By this time, the satellite was traveling south, and its southward speed would increase for the rest of the flight. The frequency shift plots for northern and southern paths, then, should get steadily further apart for the rest of the flight. Instead, the graph shows them growing closer. Eventually, they even pass each other: by the end of the flight, the graph shows the satellite traveling faster toward a northbound flight path than a southbound one, even though the satellite itself was flyingsouth.
One ping alone is damning. At 19:40 UTC, the satellite was almost motionless, having just reached its northernmost point. The graph shows a difference of about 80 Hz between predicted northbound and southbound paths at this time, which would require the satellite to be moving 33 miles per hour faster toward the southbound path than the northbound one. But the satellite's overall speed was just 0.07 miles per hour at that time.
Inmarsat claims that it found a difference between a southbound and northbound path based on the satellite's motion. But a graph of the frequency shifts along those paths should look very different from the one Inmarsat has produced.
Losing Faith
Either Inmarsat's analysis doesn't totally make sense, or it's flat-out wrong.
For the last two months, I've been trying to get authorities to answer these questions. Malaysia Airlines has not returned multiple requests for comment, nor have officials at the Malaysian Ministry of Transportation. Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre and the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch, which have been heavily involved in the investigation, both declined to comment.
An Inmarsat official told me that to "a high degree of certainty, the proponents of other paths are wrong. The model has been carefully mapped out using all the available data."
The official cited Inmarsat's participation in the investigation as preventing it from giving further detail, and did not reply to requests for comments on even basic technical questions about the analysis. Inmarsat has repeatedly claimed that it checked its model against other aircrafts that were flying at the time, and peer-reviewed the model with other industry experts. But Inmarsat won't say who reviewed it, how closely, or what level of detail they were given.
Until officials provide more information, the claim that Flight 370 went south rests not on the weight of mathematics but on faith in authority. Inmarsat officials and search authorities seem to want it both ways: They release charts, graphics, and statements that give the appearance of being backed by math and science, while refusing to fully explain their methodologies. And over the course of this investigation, those authorities have repeatedly issued confident pronouncements that they've later quietly walked back.
The biggest risk to the investigation now is that authorities continue to assume they've finally found the area where the plane went down, while failing to explore other possibilities simply because they don't fit with a mathematical analysis that may not even hold up.
After all, searchers have yet to find any hard evidence—not so much as a shred of debris—to confirm that they're looking in the right ocean.
Across Asia, judges are having too much say in politics
AFTER nearly three years, Yingluck Shinawatra's stint as prime minister of Thailand drew this week to its inevitable close. The end came not with the bang of a people-power revolution that at one point seemed likely to unseat her; nor with the muted rumble of tanks in a coup like the one that toppled her brother Thaksin from the same job in 2006; still less with the raucous clamour of a contested election, though one had been called for July 20th. Rather, it petered out in the whimper of a court order. Not for the first time the Thai judiciary has intervened to solve a problem that a broken political system could not fix. And not for the first time its intervention was to the Shinawatras' detriment.
However, Thailand is not alone in fighting political battles with legal weapons. A number of Malaysian opposition politicians find themselves in legal trouble, with potentially serious consequences. In Myanmar the opposition is planning demonstrations this month to demand reform to a constitution that places legal obstacles in the way of the country's democratisation, and of the right of Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader, to stand in a presidential election she would surely win. Even in China a purge of potential opponents of Xi Jinping, the president and party leader, takes the form of a series of prosecutions for corruption. More hopefully, in Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, a former army chief and military dictator, is fighting a charge of treason, in a trial testing the army's willingness to cede privileges and immunity to an elected civilian government.
Various trends are at work. One, evident in India and Pakistan, is an enduring tradition of activism by a robustly independent judiciary. Often this has made the courts popular by comparison with the perceived lethargy, incompetence or malice of politicians. Public-interest litigation and its ability to make rulings suo moto (off its own bat) have encouraged India's Supreme Court to meddle in environmental and social policy. It has forced Delhi's buses, taxis and tuk-tuks to convert to compressed natural gas from dirtier fuels and has taken charge of India's trees. The court's green interests might please liberals, but they rued a ruling last December that overturned a Delhi High Court decision lifting a ban on homosexuality. In Pakistan the courts helped bring down Mr Musharraf, but then proceeded to hound his civilian successor, Asif Ali Zardari, through his five-year term.
Elsewhere, however, governments use the law as an instrument of political control. That is most obvious in one-party dictatorships such as China and Vietnam. But the suspicion of judicial persecution lingers even in countries whose governments present themselves as relatively liberal—such as Malaysia's, which has lifted some repressive colonial-era legislation. Yet, after a close general election last year, a number of opposition politicians face charges for sedition or for breaches of the law on assembly. The most serious case has nothing to do with politics. It is the five-year sentence on a charge of sodomy against which Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the opposition, is appealing.
When Barack Obama visited Malaysia last month, Najib Razak, the prime minister, stressed that the Anwar case was a judicial matter in which the government had no part. Yet it was the government's own appeal which led to Mr Anwar's earlier acquittal being overturned. He is the figurehead who unites a diverse opposition torn at present by disagreement over the plan of one of its components, an Islamic party, to introduce fierce hudud punishments, such as amputations, in Kelantan, a state it governs. His disappearance into jail would be most damaging.
Thailand is illustrative of a third trend: for conservative judiciaries, when a time-honoured political dispensation changes, to find themselves, in effect, part of the opposition. Like much of the civil service, army and other pillars of Thailand's royalist establishment, the judiciary abhors the Shinawatras' alleged corruption with a special intensity in part because it fears their popularity, and hence their ability to overturn the accustomed order. In the Maldives, too, the courts helped get rid of a popular leader in 2012. Mohamed Nasheed was the first directly elected president after a long dictatorship. He threatened to shake things up, but lost a power struggle with a judge.
The Singapore sting
The lesson drawn from all this by authoritarian ruling elites facing pressure for reform is how important it is to have the courts on your side. Not only does it avoid awkward stand-offs; it helps foster the impression that you are moving towards "the rule of law". So, in Sri Lanka, the government of Mahinda Rajapaksa early last year impeached and sacked a troublesome chief justice. And in Cambodia laws now being considered would have the effect of emasculating judicial independence.
Cambodia's strongman, Hun Sen, is known to cast an envious eye at an unlikely role model: Singapore. There, the ruling People's Action Party has been in power even longer than his own Cambodian People's Party (CPP). And it has managed this without resorting to the thuggery and coups that have ensured the CPP's grip. Part of the PAP's secret is its use of the law. Strict defamation and contempt-of-court laws inherited from the British were invoked against foreign critics and domestic opponents, forcing some into bankruptcy. Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister, whose son now holds that job, justified this as necessary to protect Singapore's leaders' reputations, rather than as a way of hounding the opposition. But it had the same effect.
However, those in Cambodia and elsewhere make two mistakes when they see Singapore as a model of efficient authoritarianism applied in large measure through the legal system. One is that Singapore is an international city seen as under the rule of law. Its courts are respected, if not always the use the government has made of them. The other is that many Singaporeans are turning against the PAP, which is even trying to change its image.
Dua orang "Nun" dari Gereja Visitation di Seremban telah diserang awal pagi tadi di kawasan gereja berkenaan dipercayai kes rompakan. Kita amat bersimpati nasib yang menimpa Sister Julianna Lim Nyo Nya, 69 tahun, dan Sister Mary-Rose Teng, 79 tahun yang kini dalam keadaan amat kritikal di Hospital Seremban.
Semoga pihak polis segera dapat menangkap penjenayah yang tidak berhati perut tersebut.
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I write this in response to Terence Netto's comment in Mkini on Saturday 10th May titled "Anwar under attack in PKR".
Terence,quite oddly, did not speak to any of us named in the meeting as present in Anwar's house ( myself, Nurul Izzah, Tian Chua, Dr Syed Husin) despite his 40 years of experience as a journalist, before he wrote his article.
Clearly he preferred to rely solely on secondhand and possible third-hand accounts of what allegedly took place to base his account rather than to also talk directly to those he had named.
As a consequence of swallowing wholesale the version of his sources, he got some very basic facts wrong.
Terence stated that Saifuddin and Elisabeth Wong were there - that is false.
He also stated incorrectly that subsequently Dr Syed met Saifuddin to discuss whether he would withdraw. This is also not true.
After reading Terence's article, Dr Syed Husin sent him an sms saying he had never met Saifuddin to discuss such a matter.
Terence, very oddly again, continues to leave in his article the statement saying Dr Syed had never denied meeting Saifuddin, or even publish Dr Syed's response to him.
He also does not publish Dr Syed's statement in his sms saying that Terence's allegation that Tan Sri Khalid had left in a "huff" was not true.
Dr Syed had told Terence that Tan Sri had simply left at the time he had said he would leave for another engagement. In fact, Tan Sri Khalid shook everyone's hand, including mine, cordially in his customary style before leaving.
However the key sting of his story was that this was a meeting orchestrated by Anwar since it took place at his home, and it was Anwar's agenda to get Tan Sri Khalid to withdraw.
Terence ought to understand a simple matter - Anwar is not responsible for the agenda and content of discussion of every meeting of groups of party leaders at his home or office or anywhere else for that matter. Many of these meetings happen at the behest of some or all of those who are present. To assert otherwise is simply being disingenous.
Finally the suggestion made by Terence that the meeting discussed the continuation of Tan Sri Khalid as MB of Selangor as a quid pro quo of his withdrawal is false. It was improper and unfair to assert this as a fact when none of those said to have been present at the discussion were even asked by Terence for a response.
Finally I need to place on record that Anwar said in that discussion he will not be asking anyone to withdraw. This is the only part of a private discussion amongst individuals which I will disclose because it relates directly to the spin in Terence's article that this is an Anwar orchestrated agenda.
Ikhlas buat laporan polis terhadap Pengarah Imigresen N.Sembilan
12 Mei 2014
SEREMBAN: Presiden Pertubuhan Ikatan Usahawan Kecil dan Sederhana Malaysia (Ikhlas), Mohd Ridzuan Abdullah hari ini membuat satu laporan polis di Ibu Pejabat Daerah (IPD) Polis Seremban terhadap Pengarah Imigresen Negeri Sembilan, Faizal Fazri Omar.
Dalam laporan polis tersebut Mohd Ridzuan berkata Faizal Fazri selaku Pengarah Imigresen Negeri Sembilan telah gagal dan cuai melaksanakan tugas sebagai penjawat awam dalam menangani isu pendatang asing yang telah melanggar Akta Imigresen.
Mohd Ridzuan berkata disebabkan itu telah wujud peniaga-peniaga warga asing haram yang berani melanggar peraturan kerajaan.
"Mereka (peniaga warga asing haram) menyekat periuk nasi peniaga tempatan khususnya peniaga Melayu. Duit hasil perniagaan mereka kirim ke negara asal melalui money changer tanpa membayar cukai perniagaan (Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri)
"Rasuah melibatkan penjawat awam berkenaan dan penambahan kerakyatan pendatang asing. Pasar malam, Uptown, Bazaar Ramadhan, kawasan kampung dan bandar telah dimonopoli. Terlibat dengan gejala sosial, kongsi gelap, jenayah kekerasan dan harta benda awam. Kewujudan MyKad dan Passport Antarabangsa klon dan membawa penyakit merbahaya," katanya.
Kepada seluruh penganut agama Buddha di Malaysia saya ucapkan selamat menyambut Hari Wesak bersempena kelahiran Gautama Buddha ribuan tahun yang lalu.
Sifat mulia dan kasih sayang sesama manusia yang didokong oleh Gautama Buddha sepanjang hidupnya merupakan prinsip yang penting yang wajar diamalkan oleh seluruh rakyat Malaysia. Sejajar dengan nilai yang kami perjuangkan selama ini, kepedulian terhadap hak dan kebajikan rakyat jelata, khususnya golongan miskin dan yang terpinggir, harus dibela.
Sebarang percubaan untuk menimbulkan kebencian atas nama agama mahupun kaum terhadap kaum dan penganut agama lain harus ditentang sama sekali kerana keadilan sosial dan perpaduan negara hanya dapat direalisasikan dengan adanya ruang demokrasi dan kebebasan untuk berdialog, bukannya dengan menghina dan mencerca.
Saya menyeru agar seluruh rakyat bersama menghayati falsafah ajaran Buddha yang menitikberatkan unsur kasih sayang, toleransi dan kemuliaan insan.
We offer different watches- rolex etc., jewelry and presents. - http://x.co/4bZB7
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Having bashed Malaysia over the missing flight, China is now making up
THERE will be no let-up in the efforts to find the missing Malaysian Airlines jet Najib Razak, Malaysia's prime minister, vowed on May 5th. Despite his promise, however, there is growing acceptance that it will take months even years to find any trace of flight MH370, which disappeared on March 8th. Hopes that any of its passengers might still be alive must also be cast aside. The new search area in the Indian Ocean will alone cover 60,000 square kilometres (23,000 square miles)—and that is on top of the 4,600,000 square kilometres already scoured. Because the focus of the search-and-rescue mission has now moved to the west coast of Australia, Malaysians have some breathing space to reflect on a traumatic two months in the glare of the world's attention. The country has taken a battering, but the longer-term damage is another matter. The saga has emphasised how much Malaysia matters in the geopolitics of the region: the two Pacific superpowers, America and China, have both come to play big roles in the search for the missing plane, if in very different ways.
In any reckoning, Malaysia's handling of the loss of MH370 has been a public-relations disaster. The tone was set during the first week by the authorities' confusion, stonewalling and contradictory messages. One of the gravest flaws has been a deep reluctance to release information, however innocuous. This antagonised the victims' families. And the problem persists. On May 1st the Malaysian government published a much-heralded report on the disappearance of the plane. This turned out to consist of just five pages, containing little new information. But, as one government adviser admitted: "If we had got this out there in the first week, there wouldn't have been a nine-week drumbeat of everyone calling us lying bastards."
Opposition politicians and critics of the government say that the damage to Malaysia's reputation is a result of the country's poor governance. Malaysia, the argument goes, is more authoritarian than democratic, with little transparency or accountability in government.
There is some truth to that. But government officials are justified in feeling frustrated that the failures of communication have overshadowed their success in efficiently putting together an extraordinary coalition of countries to look for the plane. On the technical side, many acknowledge that Malaysia has done an adequate job with the relatively limited means at its disposal. It has also gone beyond the call of duty in opening up to its search partners, sharing sensitive details of its military radar system, for example, with the Chinese.
One person who has stood up for Malaysia over MH370 is Barack Obama. During a recent long-scheduled visit to Malaysia, the American president went out of his way to laud the country's leadership of the search operation. America has contributed a vast amount of equipment, man-hours and money to the search for the missing plane, out of all proportion to the three Americans (out of 227 passengers) lost on the flight. This has brought the two countries closer, at a time when America is searching for new and reinvigorated alliances in the region. Historically, there has been a good deal of anti-Americanism in Muslim-majority Malaysia, but for the time being that seems to have been stilled. Mr Obama got a hero's welcome from everyone.
That in turn may help account for the zigzag course of China in the MH370 affair. The flight was en route to Beijing, and over half the passengers were Chinese. But rather than support the Malaysian government in the first month or so, China seemed to incite the distraught families into ever fiercer, often histrionic, criticism of Malaysian officialdom, perhaps to deflect attention from the possibility that the plane might have been downed by home-grown terrorists. The Chinese did nothing to dispel some of the alternative, wilder conspiracy theories circulating in Beijing.
In recent weeks, however, the tone has changed. The Chinese ambassador to Malaysia has told the Chinese-language press in Kuala Lumpur that his country accepts that the disappearance of MH370 was not some dark conspiracy and that Chinese-Malaysian relations are unaffected. The wave of criticism in the official Chinese press has largely abated. Perhaps China feels, in the regional battle of wills with America, that it needs good relations with Malaysia and that these were threatened by its attacks. Malaysia is China's largest trade partner in the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). It also has a large ethnic-Chinese population, and thus could be helpful in its disputes in the South China Sea with other ASEAN countries, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, both firmly backed by America.
Mr Najib makes an official visit to China at the end of this month, marking the 40th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries, initiated by Malaysia's then prime minister, Abdul Razak, Mr Najib's late father. With power so finely balanced in the region, China will strive to make the visit go smoothly, including keeping angry families at a face-saving distance.
Eulogy by Anwar Ibrahim on the occasion of the memorial service for the late Irene Fernandez, on 30th April, 2014
Except for family members and fellow activists of the era then, many are not aware that Azizah and I were close friends with our dearly departed sister Irene Fernandez. Our friendship goes back to our Youth Council days.
So, her passing on was a deep personal loss.
Today, we mourn her absence. We have lost a champion of the weak, the poor and the marginalized. We have lost a fighter of true grit in the face of persecution and constant harassment by the authorities.
Yet, while mourning for our loved ones is good for the soul, nothing should hold us back from rejoicing in the memory of the good times, of the moments of joy and of the great contributions she has made to our lives.
I remember the very emotional moments during the launching of KEADILAN at the Renaissance Hotel. Well, I use the word 'remember' in a special sense because I could only get a second hand account. At that time, I was still lodging at Sungai Buloh. But that's Irene for you – no airs, no pretensions, no-holds barred of course and no holding of emotion either.
Very headstrong and by virtue of her convictions, very gung-ho at a time when this phrase wasn't that much in use yet.
Who would imagine that even then in the 70's during my ABIM days when I got to know her, for study groups comprising Sixth Form students, Irene was handing out xeroxed copies of passages from Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth?
That's how far ahead she was; and so imbued with the sense of idealism that in that innocent and naive way but with a heart full of kindness and sincerity, she felt that these students were ready for the profound message of Fanon.
That preoccupation with the role of class, the struggle for national liberation against colonial domination, and oppression of the weak and the marginalised came eventually to define her work.
That was why she wouldn't budge an inch when fighting for the downtrodden and exposed herself to criminal charges when she published that now famous report on the migrant workers.
When she was found guilty in 2003 and sentenced to one year's jail, I was looking forward to having 'working sessions' with her at the Sungai Buloh conference hall for political prisoners! But as we know that's history.
Today, there is so much religious tension being fuelled by irresponsible groups and the compliant media. Back then, Irene and I used to have very engaged and healthy inter-faith discussions. ABIM was always reaching out to the others and vice versa. Irene was at the centre of the discourse.
I know for sure Irene, emotional as she was prone to be at the right time, was not the type to indulge in self-pity. Pity on others yes, but never on herself. So, I think it is only fitting that I close my eulogy with a short poem from one of our favourite Asian Renaissance poets Rabindranath Tagore.
This is entitled Farewell My Friends from the Poems of Gitanjali :
"It was beautiful as long as it lasted
The journey of my life.
I have no regrets whatsoever
Save the pain I’ll leave behind.
Those dear hearts who love and care…
And the strings pulling at the heart and soul…
The strong arms that held me up
When my own strength let me down.
At every turning of my life I came across good friends,
Friends who stood by me,
Even when the time raced me by.
Farewell, farewell, my friends
I smile and bid you goodbye.
No, shed no tears for I need them not
All I need is your smile.
If you feel sad do think of me
For that’s what I’ll like when you live in the hearts
Across the region, power struggles mask a more fundamental divide over the meaning of the modern nation-state.
After the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, a debate raged among Egyptians and Tunisians over the very nature of their societies. How much of the ongoing "Islamization" was imposed and manufactured, and how much of it was an "authentic" representation of society? Without the stifling yoke of dictatorship, some reasoned, Arabs would finally be able to express their true sentiments without fear of persecution.
The ensuing—and increasingly charged—debate over the role of religion in public life put Western analysts and policymakers in the uncomfortable position of having to prioritize some values they hold dear over others. In the Western experience, democracy and liberalism usually went hand in hand, to the extent that "democracy" in popular usage became shorthand for liberal democracy. Liberalism preceded democracy, allowing the latter to flourish. As the political scientists Richard Rose and Doh Chull Shin point out, "Countries in the first wave [of democracy], such as Britain and Sweden, initially became modern states, establishing the rule of law, institutions of civil society, and horizontal accountability to aristocratic parliaments. Democratization followed in Britain as the government became accountable to members of parliament elected by a franchise that gradually broadened until universal suffrage was achieved." In contrast, they write, "third-wave democracies have begun democratization backwards."
Getting democracy backwards has led to the rise of "illiberal democracies," a distinctly modern creation that Fareed Zakaria documents in his book The Future of Freedom. Zakaria seeks to disentangle liberalism and democracy, arguing that democratization is, in fact, "directly related" to illiberalism. On the other hand, "constitutional liberalism," as he terms it, is a political system "marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property." "This bundle of freedoms," he goes on, "has nothing intrinsically to do with democracy."
Michael Signer makes a similar argument in his book charting the rise of "demagogues," who accumulate popularity and power through the ballot box. Like Zakaria, Signer acknowledges the inherent tensions between liberalism and democracy, noting that early generations of Americans were particularly attuned to these threats. He writes, for instance, about Elbridge Gerry, a representative from Massachusetts who declared that "allowing ordinary Americans to vote for the president was madness." Drawing on such examples, Signer argues that "at its simplest level, democracy is a political system that grants power based on what large groups of people want." And what these large groups want may not be good for constitutional liberalism, which is more about the ends of democracy rather than the means.
The emergence of illiberal democracy in the developing world saw democratically elected leaders using popular mandates to infringe upon basic liberties. Elections were still largely free and fair, and opposition parties were fractious but viable. But ruling parties, seeing their opponents more as enemies than competitors, sought to restrict media freedoms and pack state bureaucracies with loyalists. They used their control of the democratic process to rig the system to their advantage. In some cases, as in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez, a cult of personality became central to the consolidation of illiberal democracy. Sometimes it bordered on self-parody, taking the form of highway billboards announcing that "Chávez is the people."
Illiberal democracy has risen to prominence in part because Western Europe's careful sequencing of liberalism first and democracy later is no longer tenable—and hasn't been for some time. Knowing that democracy, or something resembling it, is within reach, citizens have no interest in waiting indefinitely for something their leaders say they aren't ready for. Democracy has become such an uncontested, normative good that the arguments of Zakaria seem decidedly out of step with the times. Zakaria argues, for instance, that "the absence of free and fair elections should be viewed as one flaw, not the definition of tyranny…. It is important that governments be judged by yardsticks related to constitutional liberalism." Interestingly, he points to countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Jordan, and Morocco as models. "Despite the limited political choice they offer," he writes, "[they] provide a better environment for life, liberty, and happiness of citizens than do … the illiberal democracies of Venezuela, Russia, or Ghana."
The phenomenon of Islamists seeking, or being in, power forces us to rethink the relationship between liberalism and democracy. Illiberal democracy under Islamist rule is different from the Venezuelan or Russian varieties for a number of reasons. In the latter cases, illiberal democracy is not intrinsically linked to the respective ideologies of Hugo Chávez or Vladimir Putin. Their illiberalism is largely a byproduct of a more basic, naked desire to consolidate power. In the case of Islamists, however, their illiberalism is a product of their Islamism, particularly in the social arena. For Islamists, illiberal democracy is not an unfortunate fact of life but something to believe in and aspire to. Although they may struggle to define what exactly it entails, Islamist parties have a distinctive intellectual and ideological "project." This is why they are Islamist.
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Under autocracy, leaders can more easily insulate themselves from the popular will. Islamists, to the extent they are tolerated, are so busy with mere survival that ideological demands are pushed to the side and postponed. They counsel patience, telling over-exuberant followers to wait, that the application of sharia is simply not possible now. Democracy, for both the secular and Islamist opposition, becomes the overarching imperative, because, without it, nothing else can really happen. Repression brings them together, giving them a shared enemy and a shared goal—toppling the dictator.
After their revolutions succeed, Islamists, liberals, and leftists find that they have less reason to work together. At best, they become bitter adversaries but agree to resolve their differences within the democratic process. Other times, they become implacable enemies in a zero-sum battle, one that can descend into political violence and military intervention. Either way, both sides become consumed by a struggle for the spoils of revolution, including, most importantly, control of the state and its resources. Sometimes, then, it is about power. But underlying the battle for power is a more fundamental ideological divide over the very meaning of the modern nation-state. Before the uprisings, most Arabs hadn't really had this conversation. The intellectual and political elites who did, did so in the abstract. None of them were going to be in power any time soon; it was a debate for their children or their grandchildren after them. But with the Arab revolutions, the essential questions of identity and ideology, of God and religion, of the conception of the good, assumed a newfound urgency.
In short, democratization does not necessarily have a moderating effect on Islamist parties, nor does it blunt the importance of ideology. There are no easy answers and, at some point, it may very well come down to a matter of faith. What if Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans, Yemenis, or Syrians decide, through democratic means, that they want to be illiberal? Is that a protected right? For its part, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is clear on the matter. A United Nations background note discusses the "red line": "The right to culture is limited at the point at which it infringes on another human right. No right can be used at the expense or destruction of another, in accordance with international law." For Western policymakers and Arab liberals alike, the notion that there should be supra-constitutional principles binding on all citizens seems self-evident. Liberal democracy depends upon the recognition of inalienable rights. But if Islamists do not consider themselves party to this consensus—and many do not—then the matter becomes a more basic one of colliding worldviews. This divide was evident in the contentious debates over first constitutions in Egypt and Tunisia. Egypt's first post-revolution constitution, passed by referendum in December 2012, seemed to violate the UDHR or at least failed to offer sufficient rights protections in numerous instances, including on gender equality, freedom of expression, and freedom of conscience and religion.
Even what may have seemed, in retrospect, like minor quibbles—over the particular wording of sharia clauses, for example—reflected fundamental divides over the boundaries, limits, and purpose of the nation-state. For liberals, certain rights and freedoms are, by definition, non-negotiable. They envision the state as a neutral arbiter. Meanwhile, even those Islamists who have little interest in legislating morality see the state as a promoter of a certain set of religious and moral values, through the soft power of the state machinery, the educational system, and the media. For them, these conservative values are not ideologically driven but represent a self-evident popular consensus around the role of religion in public life. The will of the people, particularly when it coincides with the will of God, takes precedence over any presumed international human-rights norms.
As much as Islamist groups moderated their rhetoric and practice from the 1970s through the 2011 uprisings, they did not become liberals (here, as ever, the distinction between being a "liberal" and a "democrat" is worth emphasizing). There was a time when the notion of "post-Islamism" gained popularity in academic circles. Turkish Islamism—which had ceased to be Islamist in any real sense—showed the way to a brave new future where Islamists would agree to work within the framework of secular democracy. However, such hopes, when applied to the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded groups, were misplaced.
At the same time, it would be a mistake to view Islamists as radicals bent on introducing a fundamentally new social order. Even the Brotherhood's most controversial positions—such as its opposition to women and Christians becoming head of state—fell well within the region's conservative mainstream. The irony of Islamist victories at the polls is that they did not announce a break with the past; they confirmed something that was already there and had been for some time. The goal of Islamists is the Islamization of society, in thought and practice, and in the standards that people hold themselves to. In some countries, like Egypt, the extent of Islamization on the societal level was striking well before Islamists even came to power; in other countries, Islamists were creating something from nearly nothing. In post-revolution Tunisia, the level of Islamization was remarkable, considering how much ground Islamists had to cover in such a short period of time. In Tunisia, Ennahda had been effectively eradicated in the early 1990s. After that, the group had no organized presence in the country, with its leaders in prison or in exile.
After the demise of strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, the changing character of society was immediately apparent, with a growing number of Tunisians dressing, speaking, and living differently. Mosque preachers, not accustomed to large crowds, reported rows of the devout lining up for prayer. It was almost as if the removal of a dictator allowed society to return to a more natural equilibrium. Certainly, the return of Ennahda members and leaders to Tunisia helped spur these changes, but the party's quick return to prominence reflected a seemingly widespread desire to reconnect with the country's Islamic roots. Just months after Rachid Ghannouchi and other leaders returned, triumphant, to Tunis in early 2011, they won by a landslide in the country's first elections, with 37 percent of the popular vote and 41 percent of the seats. (The second largest party, the secular Congress for the Republic, won only 8.7 percent of the vote and 13 percent of the seats.)
Tunisia, with its sizable middle class, high level of literacy, and one of the region's best educational systems, was thought to be less hospitable to the specter of religious politics. Ennahda's success couldn't simply be explained by superior organization, as the party could claim virtually no preexisting organizational structures. To be sure, Ennahda members proved far more effective at campaigning than their secular counterparts. They drew on the legitimacy of their decades in prison under the previous regime. But they also drew on a latent Islamization of attitudes and a popular predisposition toward the mixing of religion and politics.
Immediately after the revolutions, Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia were careful to portray themselves as responsible actors. This relative sobriety was in constant tension with their stated, and unstated, ambitions for their respective societies. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, in particular, spoke of a comprehensive "civilizational" project. While this vague aspiration, embodied in the Brotherhood's so-called Renaissance Project, had technocratic reform components, it also sought something more transformational. This part was less defined, in part because the Brotherhood had not given it the careful thought it deserved. Or perhaps, for them, it was so self-evident that it needn't be detailed in a program. Within the framework of democracy, they hoped to offer a spiritual and philosophical alternative to Western liberalism. For Islamists as well as their liberal opponents, it was a question—one that was intensely personal—of how societies would be ordered. Any moral project could be counted on to intrude on private conduct and personal freedoms, on the very choices that citizens made, or didn't make, on a daily basis.
In their original guise, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist movements believed in a bottom-up approach, beginning with the individual. The virtuous individual would marry a virtuous wife and, together, they would raise a virtuous family. Those families, in turn, would transform culture and society. Once society was transformed, the leaders and politicians would follow. No one was quite sure exactly what this looked like in practice—it had never actually been done before.
Taking the long view, the struggle for and within political Islam is not just important for understanding the evolution of Arab societies; it is important for what it can tell us about how beliefs and ideology are mediated and altered by the political process. At the end of history, Francis Fukuyama wrote, "the state that emerges … is liberal insofar as it recognizes and protects through a system of law man's universal right to freedom, and democratic insofar as it exists only with the consent of the governed." But what Fukuyama failed to grapple with is whether a state could claim the latter without enjoying the former. The question here is whether the democratic process, in the long run, will blunt the ideological pretensions of Islamist groups, forcing them to move to the center, back into the confines of the liberal democratic consensus.
In the modern period, religiously based states are rare. The few that do exist, or have existed, do not have a good track record. Afghanistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are the obvious examples, but they are of limited value in making sense of Islamism after the Arab Spring. None of them were democratic. Although they enjoyed various degrees of popular support, there was no, in Fukuyama's words, real consent of the governed. In contrast, Islamist parties today are interested in fashioning religiously oriented states through democratic means and maintaining them through democratic means. They took this to levels of near self-parody in Egypt, where elections became a sort of crutch. Whenever the Brotherhood faced a crisis, its immediate instinct was to call for elections, thinking that electoral legitimacy would stabilize Egypt and solidify its rule. (It didn't.)
Throughout the 20th century, alternative ideologies, such as socialism, communism, and Christian Democracy, all attempted to secure power through the ballot box. But these were movements with built-in limitations. Islamist groups, particularly insular and secretive ones like the Brotherhood, are divisive for other reasons, but they do not struggle with the same limitations. The vast majority of Arabs have no a priori ideological opposition to Islamism as such. Most, after all, support a prominent role for Islam and Islamic law in political life. On the other hand, the natural constituencies of socialists and Christian Democrats—workers and social conservatives, respectively—were inherently limited. To win elections, these movements needed to de-emphasize ideology and move to the center, where presumably the median voter would be found. This is how democratization produced ideological moderation, leading many analysts to assume that the same process might tame Islamist parties.
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Where it is allowed to proceed, democratization will reorient political life in Arab societies. But how? In a country like Tunisia, the center of Arab politics shifted to the right. In Egypt, it shifted to the right before retreating in the face of mounting opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists more generally.
Some "liberal" Islamists have made the case that religion should no longer be such a divisive issue. During his insurgent campaign for president, former Brotherhood leader Abdel Moneim Abul Futouh explained it this way to a Salafi television channel: "Today those who call themselves liberals or leftists, this is just a political name, but most of them understand and respect Islamic values. They support the sharia and are no longer against it." In a creative attempt at redefinition, Abul Futouh noted that all Muslims are, by definition, Salafi, in the sense that they are loyal to the Salaf, the earliest, most pious generations of Muslims. He seemed to be saying: We are all, in effect, Islamists, so why fight over it?
Abul Futouh, for all his purported liberalism, believed that the Egyptian people (and perhaps all Muslim-majority populations) had a natural inclination toward Islam. Here, the tensions between liberalism and majoritarianism became more evident. When I asked Abul Futouh in 2006 what Islamists would do if parliament passed an "un-Islamic" law, he dismissed the concern: "Parliament won't grant rights to gays because that goes against the prevailing culture of society, and if [members of parliament] did that, they'd lose the next election," he said. "Whether you are a communist, socialist, or whatever, you can't go against the prevailing culture. There is already a built-in respect for sharia."
Over the course of my interviews in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia—both before and after the Arab Spring—this particular sentiment was repeated so often that it began to sound like a cliche: freedom and Islamization were not opposed but rather went hand in hand. As Salem Falahat, the former general overseer of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, once told me, "If they have the opportunity to think and choose, [the Arab and Muslim people] will choose Islam. Every time freedom expands among them, they choose Islam." In other words, Islam didn't need to be enforced. The people, to the extent they needed to, would enforce it themselves—through the binding nature of the democratic process.
This notion has a long pedigree in Islamic thought: The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said, "My umma [community] will not agree on an error." Depending on where exactly you stand on the political spectrum, this sort of belief in the wisdom of crowds is either reassuring and somewhat banal or mildly frightening. It either hints at a new conservative consensus or at an exclusionary politics that has little space for liberal dissent.
Putrajaya must be transparent about the circumstances that led to flight MH70 vanishing two months ago, and should apologise for shortcomings in the search for the missing plane, the husband of one of the passengers wrote in an open letter to the prime minister.
K. S. Narendran, whose wife Chandrika Sharma was on the Malaysia Airlines plane with 238 other people, said the families have lost their loved ones but Malaysia had lost its credibility in the search for the Boeing 777-200ER.
“Perhaps the most serious casualty second only to the loss of the plane is the severely impaired credibility of your Government and the airline’s handling of the crisis.
“The skimpy Preliminary Report released to the public this week, supposedly based on your guidelines does little to enhance your government’s commitment to transparency, and therefore only adds fuel to doubts, suspicion and speculations,” he wrote in an email to Datuk Seri Najib Razak dated May 4, 2014.
Narendran, an Indian citizen, also asked Najib to act like a statesman in the hunt for the plane, which has yet to be found after going missing on March 8, 2014, while en route to Beijing.
“I have heard you speak thrice now, the first time on 15th March when you referred among other things to the MH370′s ‘turn back’ as ‘deliberate action’ by someone on the plane, then on 24th March when you delivered an unpalatable, cryptic message that MH 370 had ended in the Indian ocean, and a third time a little over a week ago – you in conversation with Richard Quest wherein you spoke of mistakes made.
“Each time, I experienced you as measured, sombre in a way that could be easily taken as sincere, and as a man with good intentions. You and perhaps your managers have ensured that you are statesman-like. The time has come now for you to actually be the part,” he wrote in the email.
Narendran asked the prime minister “to go deeper into what was unprecedented and when did the event enter unprecedented territory or proportions.”
“This will help separate the misjudgements and negligence of your civil aviation and military establishments from very early in the MH 370 saga: these we know from history have precedents and were avoidable.
“The rest that followed has confounded the best among experts. Therefore to invoke the lack of precedent and disclaim any direct responsibility all the way is being somewhat disingenuous,” he added.
He said that the findings could help avoid a repeat of the incident, adding that “for Malaysia’s sake and for the sake of the affected families is a sincere, heartfelt apology that things have come to such a pass.
“I would imagine that for wounded Malaysian pride, it will serve as a point from which to refashion a new set of commitments unto itself and people at large.
“For the families of passengers, it might begin a healing process and a fresh start free of rancour, accusation and suspicion,” Narendran said in the email.
He also urged Putrajaya to be transparent about the investigations into the lost plane.
“My hypothesis is that the lack of transparency that has come to define your government’s engagement with the rest of the world is because your government wants to hold onto a pretence of competence, mask the guilt and shame of initial lapses and a fear of the scorn and contempt that may be heaped on it from round the world.
“The burden of this only grows. The burden of a heavy conscience will weigh on your people for a long time if you fail to not own up,” he added.
Narendran also asked for an apology to the families of passengers and crew aboard the plane.
His wife, Chandrika, was the executive secretary of the International Collective in Support of Fish Workers and was heading to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to attend a regional conference for Asia and the Pacific hosted by Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. The couple have one daughter.
“A heartfelt apology to my mind is an admission of direct responsibility for a set of lapses that were entirely within the control of the government and the airline, taking responsibility for consequences of such responsibility, holding oneself publicly accountable for the conduct of the search and rescue/recovery, invoking humility to include or hand over to others who are competent some or all parts of the investigation, and being facilitative of the families access to detailed information at every stage.
“No doubt there is a price to pay. It must be paid. However, an apology and an appeal for forgiveness would enhance Malaysia’s standing amongst nations and peoples in a way that no amount of protestations or grandstanding will,” he added.
Narendran said for the families, “a lot rides on how diligently and persistently your government pursues the truth through investigation, how compassionate it is towards all the affected, and how humble and receptive it is in taking the waves of criticism from interested parties.
“It needs to measure up to the international benchmarks of transparency, public scrutiny and challenge, and assure the sceptical world that there is indeed no cover-up, no attempt to be creative or economical with the truth. After all, the world is watching, waiting…,” he said.
Narendran said that while the truth sometimes hurt, it would also be liberating.
“The loss of trust I alluded to earlier threatens this for me personally and I suspect for many others. It is disturbing to consider that self-centred deceit and duplicity to get ahead, move on, or self-preservation could be at work in the present instance.
“We do need a fresh start here, Mr Prime Minister. You have a part to play in shaping what we believe in, and what world we create. For us to trust you and your government, we need you too to take a leap of faith and do what is right and not just what is safe.
“So cast aside the cravings and compulsions of office and try being the statesman. Malaysia will emerge stronger, and others would be willing to give it another chance in due course,” he said in ending the letter to the prime minister.
On May 5, 2014, the first anniversary of the 13th general election, Malaysians were torn by grave disillusionment with the Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak for a year of failed policies and the dire prospect of a break-up of Pakatan Rakyat over hudud.
The next day, the beginning of the second year of Najib's second administration as prime minister, could not have started on a more ominous note, heralding that Malaysia is heading for a new dark age.
This is with all the grandiloquent pledges and slogans of 1Malaysia, World's Best Democracy and Government Transformation Programme being consigned to the dustbins of history and replaced by undemocratic, repressive, unjust and draconian rule.
In the morning, the Pakatan/DAP MP for Seputeh Teresa Kok was charged in a sessions court in Kuala Lumpur with sedition for her Chinese New Year "Onederful Malaysia" video, a 11-minute clip lampooning and criticising various failures of government policies.
It is supreme irony that one of the five criticisms in her video alleged to be seditious was about the security situation in East Sabah, especially after the abduction of the Taiwan tourist in an island resort off Semporna in November last year.
And, on the morning that Kok was charged, news was received of another abduction of a Chinese national, in a nearby island off Lahad Datu at 2.45am the same day!
Kok was telling the truth, but telling the truth has become sedition in Najib's 1Malaysia, fopr the prime minister has forgotten his promises to repeal the draconian and colonial Sedition Act.
Kok's prosecution for sedition is meant to serve as a warning by the Najib administration to all critics, whether from Pakatan, civil society or the ordinary citizens, that they face the possibility of being charged with sedition – not for telling lies and falsehoods or inciting hatred and conflict – but for legitimate criticism of the BN government for its failures and weaknesses.
Worst seditious statements of late
But irony of ironies, yesterday saw the fulmination of the most and worst seditious statements in recent memory – as testified by the following media headlines:
1. Isma: Chinese migration into Tanah Melayu 'a mistake" which must be rectified (Malay Mail Online)
2. Chinese are intruders who bully Malays, says Isma (Malaysiakini)
3. Chinese brought to Tanah Melayu are 'trepassers', says Muslim group (The Malaysian Insider)
4. If Christians continue to grow, they will outnumber us by 2100, says Muslim group (The Malaysian Insider)
5. Undercover Christian priests here as football coaches, Muslim NGOs tell forum (The Malaysian Insider)
6. Books warning Muslims about 'Christian agenda' distributed at Allah forum in university (The Malaysian Insider)
7. Gospels are 'fake' as Jesus was 'human slave to Allah', don claims (Malay Mail Online)
8. NGO warns of Christian Malays posting as Muslims (Malaysiakini)
Never before in more than four decades has the fabric and integrity of the multi-racial and multi-religious character of the Malaysian nation been undermined by such irresponsible spewing of racial and religious hatred and conflict, threatening to plunge Malaysia into a new dark age.
The impunity and immunity of the perpetrators of these merchants of hate in our multi-racial and multi-religious community is all the more incredible, as it goes against the very grain of Najib's 1Malaysia signature policy and the Global Movement of Moderates that he had launched as prime minister.
Why has Najib given full and free play to the merchants of hate, lies and falsehoods to perpetrate their worst to tear the Malaysian nation asunder?
It would appear that there are two movements under Najib as prime minister, the Global Movement of Moderates, which is good for national and international image, but which has little traction and progress to boast about; and the Movement of Racist and Religious Extremists, which is allowed full liberty to vent racist and religious venom, fully seditious and subversive of the very fabric and integrity of Malaysian unity and society.
Najib must take a clear stand: is he with the moderates or the extremists, as is he for 1Malaysia or for the very antithesis of 1Malaysia?
Kerajaan negeri mengambil inisiatif mewujudkan Unit Penyelarasan dan Pemantauan Institusi Akar Umbi (UPENPIAKU) khusus bagi mengatasi masalah birokrasi dalam menyelesaikan permasalahan rakyat.
Menteri Besar, Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan berkata, unit tersebut berperanan menjadi sebuah badan khas dalam meneliti serta memantau keperluan dan kehendak rakyat yang disampaikan melalui ahli Jawatankuasa Kemajuan dan Keselamatan Kampung (JKKK).
Sebelum ini, JKKK dipantau oleh Pegawai Daerah, namun kita melihat banyak masalah rakyat tidak sampai ke saya, ini mungkin Pegawai Daerah tidak mampu untuk memikul tanggungjawab itu kerana terlalu ramai yang perlu dipantau," katanya.
Saya merujuk kepada sebuah artikel yang dikeluarkan dalam New Straits Times yang mendakwa bahawa air yang dipam dari lombong ke Sungai Selangor boleh menyebabkan kemudaratan dan bahaya kesihatan jika digunakan kerana mengandungi ion-ion logam berat berbahaya.
Saya mendesak Kerajaan Negeri Selangor menjawab dakwaan yang dibuat ini samada ianya adalah betul ataupun semata-mata untuk menakutkan orang awam terutamanya para penduduk yang menggunakan sumber air tersebut serta menjejaskan kredibiliti keputusan pentadbiran Kerajaan Negeri berkenaan penggunaan air dari sumber lombong ini.
Kerajaan Negeri Selangor perlu mengeluarkan kenyataan dan mendapatkan pengesahan secepat mungkin daripada Kementerian Kesihatan bahawa air yang dipam dari lombong tersebut adalah selamat digunakan untuk diminum serta untuk kegunaan lain.
Kegagalan Kerajaan Negeri Selangor menjawab dakwaan ini dengan pengesahan daripada Kementerian Kesihatan akan menyebabkan seolah-olah dakwaan yang dibuat pihak terbabit adalah berasas dan ini sekali gus adalah satu tindakan yang tidak bertanggungjawab oleh Kerajaan Negeri yang akan mengundang keresahan orang awam terutamanya para penduduk yang terlibat secara langsung dalam penggunaan sumber air tersebut.
Saya mendesak sekiranya dakwaan yang dibuat adalah tidak benar dan bertujuan menakutkan orang ramai, Kerajaan Negeri Selangor seharusnya mengambil tindakan yang sepatutnya terhadap pihak yang membuat dakwaan ini. Kerajaan Negeri Selangor tidak boleh berdiam diri kerana dakwaan ini melibatkan kepentingan awam serta kredibiliti pentadbiran kerajaan negeri itu sendiri. Tindakan yang pantas dan penjelasan perlu dibuat Kerajaan Negeri Selangor secepat mungkin. YB DR XAVIER JAYAKUMAR Ahli Dewan Negeri Selangor Kawasan Seri Andalas
While the world's attention has been riveted on Ukraine and what move an emboldened Vladimir Putin will make next, diverse threats to democracy have intensified on other fronts as well. The story is not new. According to Freedom House, 2013 was the eighth consecutive year in which more countries experienced declines in political rights or civil liberties than improvements. Since 2005, democracy has ceased its decades-long expansion, leveling off at about 60 percent of all independent states. And since the military coup in Pakistan in 1999, the rate of democratic breakdowns has accelerated, with about one in every five democracies failing.
The downfall of several Arab autocracies in 2011 seemed to augur a new burst of democratic progress, but that progress has not materialized. While Tunisia has emerged as the first Arab democracy in 40 years, Egypt is more repressive now than at any time in the last decade of Hosni Mubarak's rule. Since the end of 2010, more Arab countries have regressed in freedom and political pluralism than have advanced.
The democratic recession we're witnessing has been particularly visible in big "swing states"—the non-Western countries with the largest populations and economies. Since the late 1990s, democracy has broken down in Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Kenya. The Philippines is the one relative bright spot in the group today, with a democratically elected president, Benigno Aquino, committed to serious governance reforms. Russia has become not just a venal and despotic state, but a neo-imperial menace to its neighbors as well. Nigeria has reverted back to tragic levels of political kleptocracy and fraud, feeding political polarization, ethnic resentment, citizen alienation, and an increasingly virulent Islamic terrorist movement in the north. The grip of "Bolivarian socialism" has weakened in Venezuela as governance has deteriorated, violence has exploded, and the opposition has unified behind a liberal challenger first to Hugo Chávez and then to his designated successor. But it will be a pyrrhic victory for democrats if the Chavista regime falls and social order collapses alongside it.
In January, democracy in Bangladesh suffered a major setback when the principal opposition party boycotted parliamentary elections after the ruling party abandoned neutral arrangements for electoral administration, and trust between the two parties collapsed. While Freedom House judges that democracy has returned to Pakistan, Kenya, and Thailand, these governments are so illiberal and corrupt that it is difficult to say what exactly they are.
In Thailand, enmity between the "yellow shirt" urban, middle-class backers of the monarchy and the "red shirt" partisans of populist former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has paralyzed the government and increasingly veered toward violence. Instability has been a chronic issue since the military ousted Thaksin in 2006, suspending the country indefinitely between resilient majority support for Thaksin's party and the yellow-shirt camp's continuing control of key levers of the "deep state." Since November, more than 20 people have been killed and over 700 injured in fevered street confrontations between the two camps. And the worst may be yet to come. In January, one Red Shirt militant vowed, "I want there to be lots of violence to put an end to all this…. It's time to clean the country, to get rid of the elite, all of them." As in Nigeria, renewed military intervention won't solve the country's problems. Yet if things continue to degenerate, the military is waiting in the wings.
During his 11 years in power, Turkey's domineering prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has managed to politically neutralize the military and the independent press, along with many other countervailing forces in politics and society. Those who hoped his authoritarian drift might be slowed by local elections in late March were severely disappointed, as his Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a convincing victory across Turkey's municipalities. Erdogan's victory speech that night was anything but magnanimous. He threatened those who had exposed the mounting corruption of his government (and reportedly his own family), assured his supporters that "we are the owners of this country," and portrayed his victory as a "full Ottoman slap" to all his opponents.
As Erdogan prepares to run either for prime minister or president (if he can amend the constitution to enhance the latter's powers), Turkey is in deepening trouble. Journalists fear to report the truth, and with good reason; more of them are jailed in Turkey than in any other country. Businesses fear to support opposition parties, judges fear to rule against the ruler, and the AKP—long hailed in the West for its success in reconciling Islam and democracy—is increasingly looking like an old-fashioned hegemon bent on securing its dominance. With every passing day, Turkey looks more like the fake democracy of Malaysia than any real democracy in Europe. Meanwhile, Malaysia failed to record the democratic breakthrough many expected in 2013. Even though the opposition, led by Anwar Ibrahim, won a clear majority of the vote in general elections, brazen gerrymandering and over-representation of ruling-party strongholds nullified the preference of most Malaysians.
Nor should we take India, the world's biggest democracy, for granted. In the parliamentary elections that are rolling across the sub-continent between early April and mid-May, a great pageant of democratic choice and accountability is once again unfolding on a scale never before seen in human history. It is happening largely free of violence, and with impressive administrative skill. And it will do what democracy should: Punish the corrupt, under-performing incumbents by evicting them from power. But the likely victory of the opposition BJP will bring to power a paradox. In his 12 years as chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi has not only delivered vigorous economic development, but also a style of politics so intolerant of criticism, so demanding of fawning obedience, that many Indian liberals now shudder at the prospect of his becoming prime minister.
The news is not all bad. 2014 is a year of critical elections in many places. In Indonesia, many democrats are pinning their hopes on the dynamic reformist mayor of Jakarta, Joko Widodo, who is the odds-on favorite to win the presidency. In South Africa, the spiraling corruption and lackluster performance of the ANC and its leader, President Jacob Zuma, is spawning more pluralistic politics and growing support for the liberal opposition, the Democratic Alliance. Even Afghanistan seems to be in the midst of a reasonably credible and popular electoral process that will produce a significantly more purposeful president than Hamid Karzai.
In the long run, economic development, globalization, and the growth of civil society will induce democratic change in a number of autocracies, including China and Vietnam, and, well before them, Singapore and Malaysia. But if democracy cannot be reformed and revived in the world's key swing states, the "long run" will be a lot further off than it need be—and the near term won't be hospitable to the advance of freedom.
Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and directs the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University
6 Mei 2014 - Pengerusi Pasukan Bertindak Badan Pemantau Jenayah (MyWatch), R Sri Sanjeevan hari ini menyelar pihak polis kerana bertindak lambat dalam penyiasatan berhubung kes jenayah ke atas dirinya.
Beliau turut mempersoalkan mengapa sehingga kini tiada sebarang tindakan susulan terhadap kes tembakan yang berlaku kepada dirinya Julai tahun lalu yang sehingga kini masih tiada tangkapan.
Sanjeevan turut mendedahkan beliau telah menerima tiga butir peluru 9 hidup di dalam peti surat rumah keluarganya di Kampung Taman Jaya, Bahau dua hari lalu.
Sanjeevan juga mendakwa polis bertindak "berat sebelah" kerana beliau sebagai rakyat Malaysia tidak menerima perlindungan keselamatan sama seperti sesetengah orang lain.
Pada 27 Julai tahun lalu, Sanjeevan ditembak oleh seorang pembonceng motosikal semasa beliau berada dalam sebuah kereta dalam kejadian di Jempol, Negeri Sembilan.
Sanjeevan mendakwa kejadian tersebut berlaku kerana beliau telah mendedahkan sidiket pengedaran dadah melibatkan pegawai tinggi polis di Negeri Sembilan.
Beliau juga sebelum ini menuntut polis dan Suruhanjaya Pencegahan Rasuah Malaysia mengambil tindakan dua anggota polis di Johor yang didakwa memiliki wang berjumlah RM1.5 juta dalam akaun masing-masing.
6 Mei 2014 - Ahli Dewan Undangan Negeri (ADUN) Lenggeng, Datuk Ishak Ismail mempertikaikan keputusan Menteri Besar Negeri Sembilan, Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan dalam urusan pemilihan Pengerusi dan Setiausaha Jawatankuasa Kemajuan dan Keselamatan Kampung (JKKK), Kampung Batu 7, Batu 8 dan Batu 9, Pantai di bawah DUN Lenggeng.
"Kita menolak pelantikan terbabit berikutan mendapati individu yang dipilih tidak memenuhi kriteria ditetapkan seperti mempunyai rekod jenayah, bukan ahli Umno tempatan, tidak menetap dalam kawasan jagaan.
"Justeru, kita akan bawa perkara ini ke Mahkamah dan kita mahu mahkamah membatalkan keputusan yang telah dibuat oleh kerajaan negeri dalam pelantikan jawatan JKKK terbabit," katanya kepada pemberita selepas Mesyuarat Agung Tahunan Umno Cawangan Pantai dan Pantai Setia
6 Mei 2014 - Seorang warga China dipercayai diculik dari sebuah ladang ternakan ikan di Silam, Lahad Datu, lebih kurang 24 jam selepas sekumpulan lanun merompak nelayan di perairan Tanjung Labian.
Laporan tidak rasmi itu mendakwa bahawa kumpulan lelaki bersenjata itu telah menculik warga China yang dikenal pasti sebagai Yang Zailin, yang merupakan seorang pengurus Wonderful Terrace Sdn Bhd, sebuah syarikat yang mengendalikan ladang ikan di kawasan itu pada kira-kira pukul 2.45 pagi Selasa.
Dipercayai bahawa kumpulan lelaki bersenjata itu telah melarikan diri ke arah selatan Filipina.
Pada kira-kira pukul 11 malam Ahad, empat lelaki yang berpakaian seragam ala tentera merompak seorang guru dan tiga rakan beliau yang memancing di perairan Sungai Bilis di Tanjung Labian dengan melarikan dua enjin bot sangkut dan satu enjin bot pam.
6 Mei 2014 - Bukan saja membuat bising, tetapi hampir setiap hari sekumpulan anak muda menjadikan deretan rumah kedai kosong berhampiran Taman Ixora 137, Seremban 3, di sini sebagai 'port' minum arak.
Bukan itu saja, malah sekiranya ditegur, penduduk pula akan dibaling dengan botol arak menyebabkan masing-masing terpaksa mendiamkan diri dan menahan sabar.
"Boleh dikatakan hampir setiap hari akan ada kumpulan anak muda hingga mencecah 10 orang berkumpul di situ bermula 6 petang sehingga larut malam, membuat bising sambil meminum arak.
"Mereka akan membuka radio kereta sekuat-kuatnya seperti pesta menyebabkan kami di sini terganggu," katanya.
Menurutnya, paling membimbangkan apabila kumpulan terbabit pernah bergaduh sesama sendiri menyebabkan penduduk risau kemungkinan ada yang bertindak lebih ganas.
The Diplomat's Jarni Blakkarly spoke recently with Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim about the likelihood that he will return to jail, political oppression in Malaysia, and the upcoming visit to Malaysia by U.S. President Barack Obama.
You've recently had your prior acquittal on sodomy charges overturned by the courts and been sentenced to five years in jail. As this case has been going back and forth for many years now, how likely do you think it is that you will find yourself behind bars again?
Looking at the names of the judges and the way they expedited the process, they even disallowed me to ask for just a few days to get medical documents. So looking at the judgment I think it is clearly fundamentally flawed, because they did not deal with the facts that were abused. So I think that it is clear that the executive is acting under the instruction of their political masters.
Therefore I'm not too optimistic that I will get a fair hearing and I think that it is a foregone conclusion. Notwithstanding we are of course doing our very best to get the best team of lawyers to expose the whole fiasco in the courts. Since Karpal Singh died in the accident I am now faced also with the problem of getting new lead counsel.
So you do think it is quite likely you will go to jail again?
Yes. In fact colleagues I was with in London for the Al Gore group meeting as well as some friends and Muslim groups in the U.K., all of them without hesitation tried to persuade me to remain in London instead of coming back. They all know and assume that because of the opaque system here and the judiciary that I will go to prison. But I said to them, thank you very much, but I have made my decision, I will continue the fight from within Malaysia.
What do you think will be the political ramifications if you are sent to prison? Would we see Refomasi-like protests on the streets again?
Well the system is still oppressive and there are serious signs of it. It's not just me and Karpal Signh they are trying to haul to prison, but also a few other MPs, assemblymen, party leaders and protest leaders and I think this trend will continue. Therefore you are giving people hardly any option for recourse. Where do you go if you have a problem? Are you going to go to the courts? You will not get a fair trial. So I think what the authoritarian leaders fail to realize is that there is a limit to what people and the society can endure.
However I think with the ineptitude in dealing with MH370, the international community and the international media are becoming aware of the opaqueness of the system and the failure of governance. So I think we are left with no option but to demand our rights not within the prescribed method of elections that are fraudulent or the courts.
So are you saying that Pakatan will be calling people to the streets if you are sent to jail again?
Well I'm not suggesting that; that is for people to decide. For now we are just organizing a series of meetings to explain what is going on. As you know, even the funeral of Karpal Singh—one of the great opposition leaders and icons—was not reported at all in the mainstream media. And during the final funeral possession not one leader from the ruling party or the government attended, so you can see the tendency to consider opposition leaders as the enemies of the state and I think it is very unhealthy. I can't predict exactly what will happen. There is also this movement on the first of May for example. There is already this call to protest in opposition to new taxation, fraudulent elections, and the beginning for Reformasi 2.0 will be on the first of May.
Do you think the persecution of politicians like yourself, Karpal Singh prior to his death, Tian Chua and other politicians is strengthening or weakening the positions of Barisan National?
I think that when they become more desperate they become more ruthless and this series of measures is unprecedented. We've seen it under Mahathir, we've seen it under Abdullah, but under Najib now it has gotten worse. The number of people denied entry to Sabah and Sarawack, even during a by-election, can you believe this? The election commission is just completely muted, when party leaders are denied entry to come and campaign, because they say this is the law, but this is the Election Commission acting like a small government department.
Now for example the number of MPs and State Assemblymen being hauled to court over unlawful assembly and sedition just keeps on increasing. It is also a sign of desperation, when the ruling party becomes weak they will resort to creating this enemy of the state business. I mean I'm for now [not being called] an "American CIA agent" only because Obama's visiting. So now they are downplaying the American agent thing. In fact the ruling party UMNO's paper Utusan even inferred that the MH370 is the work of the Americans and the CIA. They have now downplayed that too because of the Obama visit.
Do you think the ongoing infighting within your own party PKR will end after the party elections this coming month or will they continue?
These are democratic elections, there are of course major contenders for all the seats and all the major positions, which is very healthy. Initially in the formative period you have this consensus among the whole team of leadership. Now there are more qualified personnel, they are more critical and the environment is very democratic and I believe we will go through this process. Sure it will be messy and some may feel a bit disheartened but we are going through this, there may be one or two that say goodbye, but the rest will continue. But what is important to see is this huge groundswell of people coming to vote because it is the only party in the country that had one member, one vote.
Isn't disunity within PKR a worrying sign for the unity of the broader opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition?
I can't see that, just because there are competing groups and factions vying for the deputy presidency or challenging the incumbent – I don't read this as a sign of division. We have had problems with the leadership in the state of Selangor in the past and there have been criticisms, but still during the by-elections it went very smoothly and the whole party was together intact during the past month and I don't foresee any problems. Because this is a democratic party, which is not too familiar here within the ruling establishment, we allow everyone to give their own agenda, speeches, and public meetings. That is not a sign of disunity; that's a sign of healthy competition in a democratic party.
At the last general election you said that you would stand down if Pakatan lost. Do you have any plans for retirement or will you be leading the coalition in the 14th General Election?
I don't know; GE 14 is some way to go. For now, I am the leader coordinating the efforts of the opposition. Yes, I did say that in the event we lose the election I would retire, but we won the election, both the popular votes and the seats had there not been this fraudulent Election Commission. Thirty seats would have been won without early voting. Thousands of voters came in five days early and all the ballot boxes were kept under police custody and there was no monitoring by any other people. Then when these votes are being counted eighty percent go to the government. It's not reflective of any of the constituencies.
So well technically, yes we lost, not that we accepted the result, but we said well we have to move on otherwise there will just be chaos. However this has not been reciprocated by Najib and his administration and their display of arrogance is just excessive. They know the votes we got, and they only blame the ethnic Chinese. Until today all calls for meetings with the prime minister or leaders of the government have been rejected. Can you talk about democracy when the leader of the opposition cannot have one minute of air time on television? Cannot have any meetings with any ministers?
So there are no plans for retirement then?
No, of course, I've been going on some time. Just because they are putting me in prison now I can't announce my retirement. If I retired during the Federal courts deliberation then they would say it is a matter of conceding defeat. I have to then declare that I will fight.
The protests around GE 13 have died down and your move to become Selangor Chief Minister has been blocked by your conviction. Faced with at least another four years now till the next general election, what are the plans for Pakatan?
Well the general mood is not just to be complacent and wait for the next election; we should challenge the corrupt system now. That is why we are having this rally on the first of May and we will continue having rallies. Rallies to question the attempts by the Election Commission to reinforce the strength and dominance of UMNO through the re-delineation of constituencies, which is going to be crudely and clearly favoring the ruling party. Also the introduction of the GST, I've always seen the GST as a taxation system as transparent and efficient but not when there is so much wastage and so much corruption. Whereby the Attorney General's remarks suggest that there is almost close to twenty billion ringgit in leakages, you can't start by talking about taxes. You should start by talking about wiping out corruption and the amassing of wealth by the UMNO leaders and their cronies. These issues are now being highlighted and we are just focused on the next elections and challenging the authoritarian regime now.
Since your move to become Menteri Besar [Chief Minister] of Selangor has been blocked, what are your plans personally, moving forward?
I'll continue the same. I've never been Menteri Besar. I've been out of prison since 2004, I'm still leader of the opposition, I'm still general advisor to Keadilan [PKR], Azizah [Wan Ismail] is still the president now. Today I stepped aside, the UMNO leaders they think there is going to be a contest between Anwar and [his wife] Azizah. They get very excited and will drown the country with talk of division between husband and wife. The reason is of course purely legal because UMNO used the judiciary to first deny me a seat at the state elections and now to deny me the post of president in the party. I was prepared to take the risk personally but then they would use the Register of Societies to deregister the party
PKR and Pakatan in general had a very poor showing in East Malaysia at the last election. Why is it that East Malaysians are so hesitant to embrace Pakatan? What if anything will be done differently leading up to Sarawak's state election next year and further on into GE14?
Well I think the question assumes that everything is clean, that the electoral process is transparent, which it is not. When you're dealing with the rural heartland, the Dayak, the Bajau and the Kadazans, [they] do not have the alternative media. At least in the urban base we won 90 per cent of the seats, including in Sabah and Sarawak. Primarily because people have the choice and they do not rely on the mainstream media, which is controlled by the government. You're talking about the rural heartland, they don't have that alternative. Secondly they are the poorest and most vulnerable and 500 ringgit handouts by the government affects them. But there have been major inroads into Sabah and Sarawak and understand that there has never been that sort of a challenge in the past.
We have leaders that can't go and campaign, we have had one after the other being denied entry into Sabah and Sarawak. So these curbs are being put in place because they know people are coming to listen. I don't have a problem gathering crowds in Sabah and Sarawak which means people are now eager, and there is a hunger for information, news and change. But I do concede it is more problematic because we don't have the alternative media and secondly because the grinding poverty which makes them vulnerable to government power.
It has been reported that U.S. President Barack Obama won't be meeting with you on his visit to Malaysia later this week. Is this a disappointment? And would you like to see the us become more involved in promoting democracy in Malaysia?
The U.S., Australia and Europe have been harping on about democracy and freedom. My view has been quite well known that there should be a consistent and coherent message. You can't be like the Australians sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and then being completely muted when there are efforts for example to forestall democratic reforms in your own neighborhood. So our expectation of President Obama particularly after the very significant Cairo address is to give a clear, consistent and coherent message. Meeting Anwar is not the issue here but give a clear consistent message—that was our message in meeting with Susan Rice and we will keep sending key prominent party leaders to meet her with that message.
For example in his visit to Burma last year Obama met with Aung San Su Kyi and there was in a way a recognition that she was a leader in waiting and that there are fundamental flaws in the democratic system. Is that what you were hoping to see in Obama's visit to Malaysia?
Yes of course, because if you are true to your foreign policy objectives then you cannot ignore the expression of 52 per cent of the Malaysian population and pretend that nothing is happening, everything is all right, this is a moderate Muslim country, democracy is at work and everything is all right like some of the Australian leaders express when they come here. This is not something that would be well received by the general public here. But I would say that Susan Rice clarified by her remarks in D.C. some days back said that though they are not meeting [me] there will be some clarity of the message, which means I think they will be true to the consistent position of the United States in promoting democracy and freedom.
Why is it that you think the U.S. have been inconsistent with their message in Malaysia? Do you think it is out of concern for Chinese influence in Malaysia and the region?
I'm not sure of the reason, but of course Obama is obsessed about the TPPA. Najib is quite unique in that he supports virtually every single policy objective or initiative of the U.S. Whether it is sending troops or civilians to support in Afghanistan or Iraq, or the Iranian nuclear program, or the TPP, I think Najib has been consistent in supporting the U.S. line and therefore they see him as a very important major ally and as always they will be willing to close one eye when it comes to political oppression, as of course we have seen in U.S. relations with [former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak in the recent past.
The Jakarta visit on the 2nd and 3rd May 2014 was organized by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) where DSAI is currently a board member.
DSAI arrived in Jakarta around noon on the 2nd and was greeted by Mr Adi Sasono who was the former Co-operative Minister for Indonesia under Soeharto's era.
At 3pm, DSAI delivered an Executive Lecture at the Al-Azhar University of Indonesia (UAI) entitled "Islamic Value and the Revival of the Muslim Ummah" together with Prof Dr Ir Sardy Sar (UAI Rector) and chaired by Dr Hamad Lubis (Deputy Rector Academic). The former Indonesian ambassador to Jordan, Mr Zaenul Baharnur was also present. The lecture centred on the importance of Muslims to practice a discipline of knowledge, whereby the excellence in science and technology should always be laced with the inculcation of Islamic values.
At 5pm, DSAI engaged the District Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Daerah) on a dialogue entitled "Kebangkitan Asia dan Dinamika Integrasi Global". He was introduced by the DPD speaker Mr Irman Gusman and Mr Farhan Hamid who is the Deputy Speaker of MPR (Majlis Pemesyuaratan Rakyat). Mr Irman expressed the support of Indonesians for him. In his speech, DSAI lauded the culture of Indonesia that values tolerance and stressed on the importance to elevate leaders based on ideas and not personality, the importance of democracy and a free, liberalised economy.
On the 3rd of May at 930am, DSAI attended a closed door meeting with Muslim Organisations at the Dewan Dakwah Islamiah (DDI) together with Mr Wahid Alwi (Deputy Leader DDI), Mr Kamarudin Jaafar (from PAS Malaysia), Mr Shabrimi Sidek (IIIT Malaysia co-ordinator), Mr Adi Sasono and Mr Amidi Abdul Manan (ABIM President). The meeting was to re-invigorate relations and also to discuss current issues in Malaysia.
5 Mei 2014, Johor Bahru: Kerana berasak dalam keadaan cuaca panas menyebabkan beberapa penyokong pasukan JDT pengsan ketika membeli tiket di Stadium Tan Sri Dato Haji Hassan Yunos, Larkin di sini, pagi tadi, bagi menyaksikan perlawanan separuh akhir pertama Piala FA antara pasukan itu dan Pahang, malam ini.
Penyokong JDT mula berkumpul diperkarangan stadium sejak jam 4 pagi walaupun kaunter jualan tiket dibuka pada jam 9 pagi. Sehingga jam 10.30 pagi tadi, lebih 5,000 orang beratur untuk membeli tiket.
BERNAMA 2 Mei 2014 - Masih ada masyarakat yang tidak bertimbang rasa apabila merokok, bersifat pengotor dan melakukan kerosakan terhadap kemudahan awam. Ramai perokok di negara ini yang tidak mempunyai hati nurani sewajarnya malah sengaja merokok di kawasan awam seperti, kedai makan, kawasan hospital, sekolah dan tangga pejabat tertutup tanpa mempedulikan kesihatan mahupun perasaan orang lain.
"Tabiat merokok memang amat sukar diatasi, tetapi sebaiknya berpada-padalah, jangan pula hingga menyusahkan orang lain," akui Yang Dipertua Persatuan Keselamatan Pengguna Kuala Lumpur (PKP), Samsudin Mohamad Fauzi.
Merokoklah di tempat yang tersorok dan mempunyai pengudaraan terbuka, katanya, mengambil contoh kebiasaan perokok di Jepun yang merokok hanya di tempat khas malah membawa dompet rokok khas untuk membuang habuk rokok.
Malah, ada juga perokok yang tanpa rasa segan sengaja menghembus ke arah laluan orang ramai, misalnya, mereka yang terdesak untuk merokok selepas makan tetapi malas untuk beralih tempat ke lokasi yang lebih sesuai.
Tidak cukup dengan itu, mereka yang membuang habuk dan puntung rokok di merata-rata tempat seperti pinggan makan, lantai dan tangga laluan awam, sekaligus mengotorkan kawasan awam dan menyakitkan mata pengunjung lain.
"Saintis membuktikan bahawa menghirup udara yang mempunyai kesan rokok akan memburukkan lagi keadaan pesakit yang mana sistem imun mereka telah sedia terjejas, serta kanak-kanak dan bayi yang masih belum mempunyai paru-paru yang kuat.
Apo koba oghang Gombau. Bolum GST ghogo ghumah kek Ghombau ni dah melambung tinggi. Cayo tak ghumah teres kek Ghombau skarang ghogo eh lobih RM 300,000.00? Iyo ! Oghang luar dah ghamai boli ghumah, boli tanah kek Ghombau. Oghang Ghombau sendighi tak mampu nak boli ghumah kek sini. Tak tahulah mano anak cucu oghang Ghombau nak duduk lopeh ni. Bolum GST pun ghogo ghumah kek Ghombau dah maha, dah GST nanti tak tahulah.
Ghombau dah maju, stesen ketapi dah ado, stesen komuter dah ado, KFC dah ado, Marrybrown pun nak bukak tak lamo laei, UITM Ghombau tak lamo laei nak siap. Siapo ada ghumah pesako yang bughuk tu bulehlah baiki buek sewo budak-budak UITM nanti.
UiTM in Rembau by 2016
THE construction of the second Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) campus in Negri Sembilan will start soon. UiTM vice-chancellor Datuk Seri Dr Sahol Hamid Abu Bakar said preliminary work was ongoing after the groundbreaking on May 4.
"If everything goes according to plan, I believe the campus will be completed in two years' time," he said when contacted yesterday. He said UiTM had made a development agreement with Konsesi Kota Permatamas Sdn Bhd in February for the RM230 million contract.
The contract, he said, included a housing project for the university's Faculty of Communications and Media Studies, Faculty of Business Management and Faculty of Information Studies.
The long-awaited UiTM Rembau campus will be able to accommodate 3,000 students in its faculties. Its hostel will be able to accommodate about 1,500 students.
Built on a 32.3ha lot situated 14km from Rembau, construction work on the campus is slated for completion in September 2016.
5 Mei 2014 - Persatuan Psikiatri Malaysia (MPA), Dr. Abdul Kadir Abu Bakar mendedahkan bilangan rakyat negara ini yang menghidap penyakit mental yang serius kini berada pada tahap membimbangkan apabila secara purata tujuh orang daripada mereka didiagnos mengalami skizofrenia setiap hari.
Ketika ini sebanyak 2,500 kes baharu dilaporkan pada setiap tahun. "Dijangkakan menjelang 2020, penyakit mental akan menjadi penyakit kedua terbanyak dalam kalangan masyarakat di negara selepas penyakit jantung.
"Dianggarkan lebih 25,000 pesakit tersebut tidak mendapat rawatan dan jumlahnya dijangka terus meningkat setiap tahun berikutan skizofrenia merupakan pesakit mental yang paling banyak mendapat rawatan di wad serta rawatan pesakit luar di hospital," katanya.
There are no ideologues in a financial crisis, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke once said. Clearly the same doesn't hold true for political crises, as a comparison of Malaysia and South Korea very quickly reveals.
Tragedy has struck both nations in recent weeks, their travails played out in horrifying detail on the world's television screens. Fairly or unfairly, the hunt for a missing Malaysian airliner and the desperate attempt to rescue and now recover victims from the sunken Sewol ferry are being viewed as tests of the governments in Putrajaya and Seoul, if not of Malaysian and South Korean societies. The grades so far? I'd give Korea an A-, Malaysia a D.
In the two weeks since the Sewol tipped over and sank — almost certainly killing 302 passengers, most of them high school students — Korea has been gripped by a paroxysm of self-questioning, shame and official penitence. President Park Geun Hye issued a dramatic and heartfelt apology. Her No. 2, Prime Minister Chung Hong Won, resigned outright. Prosecutors hauled in the ship's entire crew and raided the offices of its owners and shipping regulators. Citizens and the media are demanding speedy convictions and long-term reforms.
And Malaysia, 55 days after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished? Nothing. No officials have quit. Prime MinisterNajib Razak seems more defiant than contrite. The docile local news media has focused more on international criticism of Malaysia’s leaders rather than on any missteps by those leaders themselves.
Both countries are democracies — Malaysia's even older than South Korea's. The key difference, though, is the relative openness of their political systems. One party has dominated Malaysia since independence, while Korea, for all its growing pains and occasional tumultuousness, has seen several peaceful transfers of power over the past quarter-century. Unused to having to answer critics, Malaysia's government hasresponded defensively. Korean officials, on the other hand, are reflecting, addressing the anger of citizens, and delving into what went wrong with the shipping industry's regulatory checks and balances.
That's why Korea is likely to come out of this crisis stronger than ever, unlike Malaysia. The two nations responded similarly after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, too. Malaysia's then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad sought to prove Bernanke's axiom wrong, bizarrely blaming some shadowy Jewish cabal headed by George Soros for the ringgit’s plunge. Malaysia didn’t internalize what had gone wrong or look in the mirror. It didn’t admit it had been using capital inflows unproductively and that coddling state champions — including Malaysia Airlines — was killing competitiveness. Never did the ruling United Malays National Organization consider it might be part of the problem.
Contrast that with Korea’s response to 1997. The government forced weak companies and banks to fail, accepting tens of thousands of job losses. Authorities clamped down on reckless investing and lending and addressed moral hazard head-on. Koreans felt such shame that millions lined up to donate gold, jewelry, art and other heirlooms to the national treasury.
South Korea’s response wasn’t perfect. I worry, for example, that the family-run conglomerates, or chaebol, that helped precipitate the crisis are still too dominant a decade and a half later. But the country's economic performance since then speaks for itself.
Now as then, Korea's open and accountable system is forcing its leaders to look beyond an immediate crisis. Ordinary Koreans are calling for a national catharsis that will reshape their society and its attitude toward safety. Park's government has no choice but to respond.
Malaysia's government, on the other hand, appears to be lost in its own propaganda. To the outside world, acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Husseinperformed dismally as a government spokesman: He was combative, defensive and so opaque that even China complained. Yet Hishammuddin is now seen as prime-minister material for standing up to pesky foreign journalists and their rude questions. The government seems intent on ensuring that nothing changes as a result of this tragedy.
As hard as it seems now, South Korea will move past this tragedy, rejuvenated. Malaysia? I’m not so sure.
Pengurus ladang ditemui mati ; 2 Mei 2014 REMBAU - Seorang pengurus ladang ditemui mati pagi tadi dengan kepalanya ditutup plastik dan kaki serta tangannya diikat di Ladang Perhentian Tinggi, Jalan Seremban-Tampin dekat sini. Mayat Lau Ah Kaw, 72, ditemui pekerjanya kira-kira 10 meter dari pagar rumah banglonya kira-kira pukul 6.30 pagi.
"Dia dipercayai keluar dari rumah pukul 6.20 pagi untuk ke pejabat ladang yang terletak kira-kira 500 meter dari rumahnya. Beberapa pekerja terdengar jeritannya dan bunyi bising dari bahagian depan pagar, namun tidak perasan apa-apa berlaku kerana keadaan sekitar yang gelap. Dompet mangsa dikatakan turut hilang.
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Bangsa mana agaknya yang paling takut apabila hukuman hudud dilaksanakan? Apakah bentuk hukuman hudud yang dikenakan terhadap kaki judi yang beragama Islam?
66 peratus tahi judi yang ditahan ialah orang Melayu
SEREMBAN 1 Mei 2014 - Judi siber kini menjadi ancaman besar kepada kesejahteraan rakyat di negeri ini, malah dianggap sebagai krisis yang perlu dibanteras dalam apa juga cara. Sebanyak 271 orang kaki judi siber telah ditahan sepanjang Januari sehingga 19 April lalu. Daripada jumlah tersebut, bangsa Melayu adalah yang paling ramai ditahan iaitu sebanyak 178 orang.
"Selain mereka, bangsa India yang ditahan sebanyak 45 orang, Cina 39 orang dan lain-lain bangsa sembilan orang.
Buek malu oghang Nismilan yo. Mano poei eh semangat ukhuwwah Islamiah dan semangat kejiranan kito? Jangan pulak ado cikgu yang tumbuk guru bosa lopeh ini angkara Whatsapp atau Facebook sudahlah, buek malu anak mughid yo ! Campak an yo telipon tu kok buek doso yo, dongan kekawan bukan main laei bebughak dalam Fesbuk dan Watsup, dongan dongan mak ayah kek kampung tak di jongok eh.
2 suri rumah cederakan jiran angkara komen dalam Facebook didenda
1 Mei 2014 Seremban: Gara-gara mencederakan jiran mereka, dua suri rumah masing-masing didenda RM1,500 oleh Mahkamah Majistret di sini, semalam kerana sengaja menyebabkan kecederaan terhadap mangsa akibat tidak puas hati dengan komen dibuat dalam laman sosial Facebook.
Majistret Mohamad Izwan Mohamed Noh menjatuhkan hukuman itu terhadap Maziah Samion, 31, dan Melor Abu Bakar, 51, yang mengaku bersalah selepas tuduhan dibacakan terhadap mereka.
Mengikut kertas tuduhan, Maziah dan Melor didakwa bersama-sama menyebabkan kecederaan terhadap Saridah Sohib, 39, di sebuah rumah di Jalan 19, Taman Mulia, Mantin, 21 Februari lalu, kira-kira jam 10 malam.
Mengikut fakta kes, ketika Saridah (pengadu) berada di rumahnya di Jalan 19, Taman Mulia, Mantin, dia didatangi kedua-dua tertuduh dan berlaku pertengkaran antara mereka.
PAS SHOULD GET PAKATAN CONSENSUS BEFORE HUDUD BILL CAN BE TABLED
I would like to express my shock over the recent announcement by the Kelantan Menteri Besar that the state once again proposes to table a private bill in Parliament before end of the year to seek a declaration that Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code Enactment II, or hudud, can be implemented in the state.
Besides Pas, fellow PR members PKR and DAP were not informed of the impending move, which is something that goes against the spirit of Pakatan Rakyat.
Worst still, Barisan Nasional who had oppose hudud for many years had suddenly implied its willingness after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak who said on Thursday that the Federal Govern¬ment has never rejected the implementation of hudud.
While BN component parties such as MCA and Gerakan may feel otherwise, we all know that the stance made by Umno and its leaders will prevail at will without referring to any of its coalition members.
Pas being a member of the Pakatan Rakyat should have consulted the Pakatan leadership and reached a consensus before any decision regarding hudud can be made.
Unlike Barisan Nasional, it has always been the way that Pakatan Rakyat and its allies operate, which shows transparency and accountability to the Pakatan coalition and the rakyat.
PKR has always remain confident that the PAS leadership, especially those in Kelantan, will seek out its coalition partners to talk about the issue.
Now in lieu of recent events, it important for Pas leaders to present their case once again as presented by Pas president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang at the presidential council attended by all key Pakatan leaders in 2011.
The decision which was made then was that hudud was not part of Pakatan common policy framework and that nothing can take off without consensus from all coalition partners.
It is of my hope and wish that Pas would once again bring forth its case before the upcoming presidential council so that a detailed discussion and fruitful decision be made.
KUALA LUMPUR 30 APR: Sempena himpunan 1 Mei esok, bilik operasi gerakan guaman dan perubatan dibuka sebagai persediaan menghadapi sebarang kemungkinan.
Jawatankuasa 1 Mei dalam siaran di laman facebook memaklumkan, sekiranya ada peserta himpunan 1 Mei ditahan polis, digalakkan untuk menghubungi mana-mana diantara nombor kecemasan berikut: 013-3845740, 019-4442070, 019-2207495, 016-3832323, 012-6648873, 017-2649017, 019-8013149, 017-2734090 dam 019-2490167.
Manakala Dewan Pemuda Pas Selangor turut menyediakan sukarelawan guaman melalui Jabatan Undang-undang & hak asasi manusia (Juham).
Juham memaklumkan, jika ada peserta terlibat kes tangkapan atau melihat provokasi sepanjang himpunan 1 Mei sila SMS ke nombor Hotline 011- 2663 6724, 011- 2663 6784 dan 011- 2663 6796.
bantuan_perubatanPengadu hanya perlu menyatakan nama dan nombor kad pengenalan, tarikh dan masa tangkapan dan lokasi balai polis dimana peserta ditahan.
Sementara itu, jika peserta himpunan memerlukan bantuan perubatan, sila SMS lokasi tepat, tanda tempat berkaitan, jenis kecemasan dan nombor telefon ke talian 019-3710015.
KUALA LUMPUR 30 APR: Jawatankuasa Mei 1 adalah satu jaringan yang telah menganjurkan Hari Pekerja setiap tahun. Jawatankuasa ini terdiri daripada 15 organisasi dan Deklarasi Hari Pekerja 2014 disokong oleh 91 Organisasi.
Peserta himpunan 1 Mei digalakkan menyalin nota dan mencetak nombor-nombor telefon penting yang terdapat dalam panduan ini.
Dibawah adalah panduan untuk Himpunan Mei 1 bagi melancarkan perhimpunan pada 1 Mei 2014 dan pastikan ia berjalan dengan aman.
*Perkara yang perlu anda bawa/sediakan *
1. Kad pengenalan, lesen memandu (alat memperkenalkan diri)
2. Warna tema untuk perhimpunan ini adalah warna Merah dan digalakkan
3. Setiap peserta digalakkan memakai kasut
4. Barangan kempen -Button, kopiah, arm band, bendera kecil, banner dan placard yang ada Logo atau Slogan Bantah GST atau apa-apa tuntutan rakyat boleh digunakan selaras dengan Hari Pekerja
5. Air mineral, sedikit makanan ringan atau gula-gula
6. Jika anda mempunyai asma atau alahan sila bawa inhaler atau ubat sendiri
7. Sila bawa beg plastik sampah kecil bagi mengelakkan anda membuang sampah merata-rata
8. Sila bawa pen dan kertas (mini note pad) bagi mencatat nama dan no. pengenalan Polis atau dokumenkan insiden penting yang mencurigakan
9. Jangan lupa bawa kamera, video cam atau handphone berkamera bagi merakamkan suasana himpunan – gambar-gambar atau klip video boleh dihantar kepada kami selepas himpunan ke email yang tertera diatas.
Maklumat Penting Sekretariat Himpunan Mei 1: 019-2275982 @ 0193758912 @ 03-22747791 Kecemasan untuk Perubatan : 019-3710015 Hotline Urgent Arrest : 03-77843525
Maklumat terkini : https://www.facebook.com/bantahgst
*Perkara yang tidak dibenarkan*
1. Jangan bawa terlalu banyak wang atau kad kredit untuk elakkan penyeluk saku, tercicir atau hilang semasa perhimpunan atau ditahan
2. Jangan memakai selipar, kasut tumit tinggi atau sandal yang menghalang pergerakkan
3. Jangan bawa sebarang bendera parti politik
4. Banner, placard, bendera yang bersifat provokasi dan ancam keharmonian kaum dan agama adalah ditegah
5. Sebarang slogan yang tiada kaitan dengan tuntutan rakyat tidak dibenarkan
6. Jangan bawa sebarang benda tajam kecuali pen
7. Jangan bawa bahan-bahan yang boleh meletup atau mudah terbakar seperti mancis, dan mercun
8. Tidak digalakkan merokok semasa perhimpunan kerana akan menganggu orang lain. (Team Perubatan mencadangkan tidak merokok semasa perhimpunan)
9. Jangan bawa sebarang senjata seperti kayu, besi, rantai besi dan lain-lain yang merbahaya
*Semasa perhimpunan *
Mei_1_anti_GST1. Tempat berkumpul di KLCC adalah dekat Air Pancut KLCC yang berhadapan dengan jalan utama
2. Berkumpul di tempat pertemuan yang ditetapkan KLCC dan tunggu arahan dari * Pengerusi Majlis @ Central Command* yang dilantik
3. Bergerak dalam kumpulan dan selalu memastikan kumpulan anda selamat dan tidak hilang
4. Ikutilah arahan dari *Pengerusi Majlis @ Central Command* sepanjang program
5. Elakkan mencerca, memaki hamun atau menunjukkan isyarat lucah semasa perhimpunan berlaku
6. Pastikan anda memberikan keutamaan laluan kepada kenderaan yang lalu lalang dan tidak melintas sesuka hati dijalanraya
7. Rakamkan suasana himpunan – gambar-gambar atau klip video boleh dihantar kepada kami selepas himpunan di email Jawatankuasa Mei 1: jerit2002@gmail.com
8. Kalau boleh rakamkan sebarang insiden atau provokasi atau insiden penting seperti keganasan atau provokasi Polis jika ada.
9. Jika ada penangkapan hubungi pihak penganjur yang terdekat @ SUARAM -03-77843525 . Kalau orang berhampiran anda ditangkap, ambil nama dan kad pengenalannya dan segera maklumkan kepada penganjur
*Apa yang anda perlu buat jika ditahan* : APABILA DISOAL OLEH POLIS
1. Pengenalan Anda
2. Anda cuma perlu berikan nama, kad pengenalan dan alamat sahaja
3. Seandainya ditanya soalan-soalan lain: Anda menjawab "Saya akan jawab dibawah mahkamah dan saya mempunyai hak untuk berdiam diri"
4. Wakil peguam dan SUARAM akan berada disitu untuk membantu anda
5. Jika pihak polis tidak mahu benarkan peguam atau pihak SUARAM, anda harus TUNTUT untuk berjumpa dengan peguam
*Perhatian!*
Pihak kami tidak akan bertanggungjawab terhadap sebarang kesalahan atau pelanggaran undang-undang yang tidak ada kena mengena dengan perhimpunan ini
2. Pihak kami tidak akan bertanggungjawab terhadap sebarang provokasi atau tindakan ganas yang dilakukan oleh mana-mana pihak secara berkumpulan atau individu
3. Pihak kami tidak akan bertanggungjawab terhadap sebarang kecederaan yang disebabkan oleh kecuaian atau tindakan diluarkan arahan penganjur
4. Pihak kami tidak akan bertanggungjawab ke atas sebarang penangkapan yang dibuat kerana pergaduhan atau aktiviti agresif yang tiada kaitan dengan arahan himpunan ini Secara keseluruhannya, kita berharap Perhimpunan ini dapat berjalan lancar tanpa adanya sebarang masalah atau tangkapan.
KUALA LUMPUR 30 APR: Jawatankuasa 1 Mei menyeru rakyat Malaysia untuk hadir ke himpunan 1 Mei sebagai referendum membantah pelaksanaan cukai barangan dan perkhidmatan (GST).
"Setakat ini, 95 organisasi NGO, kesatuan sekerja, persatuan pengguna, parti politik telah menyokong Deklarasi Hari Pekerja 2014 dimana tuntutan utama deklarasi adalah membantah pelaksanaan cukai GST.
"Marilah kita tidak sia-siakan hari bersejarah ini dan menggunakan hari ini untuk membuat satu referendum kepada Kerajaan bahawa rakyat menolak Cukai GST," kenyataan Jawatankuasa 1 Mei dipetik.
Dalam pada itu, Jawatankuasa 1 Mei turut melancarkan Deklarasi 1 Mei yang mengandungi 15 tuntutan termasuk bantahan terhadap pelaksanaan cukai GST dan rundingan Perjanjian Perkongsian Trans-Pasifik (TPPA).
Berikut adalah 15 perkara yang terkandung dalam Deklarasi 1 Mei: 1. Tolak dan Batalkan CUKAI BARANGAN DAN PERKHIDMATAN (GST) yang memiskinkan lagi rakyat.
2. Hentikan Rundingan Trans Pasifik Partnership Agreement (TPPA). Dedahkan kandungan TPPA di Parlimen dan dapatkan pandangan rakyat terhadap perjanjanjian TPPA ini.
3. Menguatkuasakan pelaksanaan 100% Polisi Gaji Minima RM900 di Semenanjung Malaysia dan RM800 di Sabah dan Sarawak dan mengkaji semula jumlah Gaji Minima ini selaras dengan kenaikan kos hidup, maka kami sarankan RM1500 Gaji Minima dilaksanakan.
4. Hak Kesatuan Sekerja – Hormati semangat keharmonian industri dengan memperkasakan kesatuan sekerja. Pihak majikan harus hentikan aktiviti menghancurkan kesatuan sekerja di Negara ini.
5. Hak Pekerja Wanita – Hentikan segala bentuk diskriminasi dan keganasan terhadap wanita. Majikan, Kerajaan dan Mahkamah perlu menegakkan hak wanita dan melaksanakan konvensyen berkaitan Penghapusan segala Bentuk Diskriminasi terhadap Wanita (CEDAW). Hentikan gangguan seksual di tempat kerja, termasuk dengan menggubal Akta Gangguan Seksual yang komprehensif.
6. Hak Pekerja Migran – Pekerja migran harus diberikan hak yang saksama dan perlindungan yang mencukupi. Hentikan eksploitasi – keadaan kerja yang tidak selamat, waktu kerja yang panjang, tiada latihan kemahiran, hak kesihatan tidak terjamin serta tiada perwakilan kesatuan sekerja.
7. Hak Pembelaan Pekerja Migran – Pekerja migran yang dibuang kerja harus dibenarkan berada di Malaysia dengan permit kerja sehingga kesnya didengar penuh untuk mempertahankan hak dia. Hapuskan kontradiksi undang-undang antara Kementerian Sumber Manusia dan Jabatan Imigeresan.
8. Hentikan Penswastaan Perkhidmatan Asas – Air, elektrik, kesihatan, pengangkutan awam, pendidikan tidak harus diswastakan demi keuntungan. Ianya satu perkhidmatan yang harus disediakan oleh Kerajaaan.
9. Kebebasan Media – Media utama dan alternatif harus diberi kebebasan untuk memberi maklumat sebenar kepada rakyat. Maka, Akta Penerbitan dan Mesin Cetak yang menyekat kebebasan ini harus dimansuhkan.
10. Kawal Harga Barang – Kawal kenaikan harga barang dan perkhidmatan termasuk harga minyak dan berikan semula subsidi kepada rakyat.
11. Hak Pelajar – Mansuhkan AUKU dan PTPTN. Berikan pendidikan percuma kepada semua pelajar.
12. Hak Orang Asal – Iktiraf Hak Tanah Adat Orang Asal di Malaysia dan berikan hak milik kekal serta kukuhkan status tanah Rizab Orang Asal di Malaysia (Semenanjung, Sabah dan Sarawak). Rancangan pembangunan tanah Orang Asal hendaklah berasaskan kehendak, keperluan dan aspirasi Orang Asal.
13. Alam Sekitar – Hentikan projek yang memudaratkan kesihatan rakyat Malaysia seperti Lynas, Insinerator dan lain-lain. Gunakan tenaga alternatif yang bersih dan murah.
14. Perumahan Selesa – Hentikan pengusiran paksa terhadap peneroka bandar. Skim Perumahan Rakyat pada harga yang mampu dibeli, lokasi strategik dan selesa harus dilaksanakan.
15. Mansuhkan segala undang-undang yang menindas dan mendiskriminasi rakyat, antaranya Akta Kesalahan Keselamatan (Langkah-Langkah Khas) 2012, Prevention of Crime Act (PCA), Akta Perhimpunan Aman (APA), Akta Rahsia Rasmi (OSA), Akta Hasutan 1948 (Sedition Act), Akta Dadah Berbahaya
KUALA LUMPUR 30 APR: Presiden KEADILAN, Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Ismail menyeru semua anggota KEADILAN di seluruh negara turun ke Himpunan Himpunan Tindakan Rakyat esok bagi menyatakan bantahan keras terhadap pelaksanaan Cukai Barangan & Perkhidmatan (GST).
"KEADILAN menyatakan komitmen bersama dengan Pas dan DAP dalam Pakatan Rakyat, serta seluruh rakyat yang cintakan keadilan untuk menyertai Himpunan Tindakan Rakyat pada 1 Mei 2014 di Dataran Merdeka.
"Himpunan 1 Mei ini, akan turut disertai puluhan NGO yang akan berarak dan bergabung di Dataran Merdeka daripada KLCC, Sogo, Masjid Negara, Brickfields dan Dataran Maybank, Pudu, bergerak dari semua lokasi mulai jam 2 petang.
"Kita perlu turun bersama-sama untuk mempertahankan rakyat, berhimpun secara aman dalam semangat demokratik yang tinggi," kata Wan Azizah dalam kenyataannya hari ini.
Himpunan Bantah GST Sampai Tumbang Hari Pekerja 1 Mei 2014Tambahnya, KEADILAN yakin orang ramai yang turun menyertai himpunan ini merupakan rakyat yang matang dan sesekali tidak akan menimbulkan provokasi sehingga boleh mendatangkan ketegangan.
Dalam pada itu, polis Kuala Lumpur hari ini membenarkan penganjur himpunan 1 Mei berhimpun di Jalan Raja – jalan besar berhadapan padang dan bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad berhampiran Dataran Merdeka.
Orang ramai yang hadir digalakkan berpakaian tema warna merah, simbolik perjuangan buruh ke semua lokasi yang ditetapkan ebelum bergerak ke Dataran Merdeka tepat jam 2 petang.
Seperti dijangka Kerajaan Negeri Selangor hari ini mengumumkan bahawa catuan air yang berlarutan lebih dua bulan di negeri ini ditamatkan esok.
Menteri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim menyatakan walaupun paras air masih belum melepasi paras selamat pada 55 peratus, tetapi ia telahpun secara konsisten meningkat dan kini di atas tahap kritikal iaitu 40 peratus.
Beliau berkata perkara itu dipersetujui oleh semua pihak terlibat termasuk Suruhanjaya Perkhidmatan Air Negara (SPAN), Jabatan Pengairan dan Saliran (JPS) Lembaga Urus Air Selangor )LUAS)dan Kumpulan Semesta Sdn Bhd (KBSB) yang mentadbir empangan Sungai Selangor.
"Pelan catuan air akan dihentikan mulai esok 1 Mei", katanya dalam sidang media selepas mesyuarat Exco sebentar tadi.
Sebelum ini Pengerusi SPAN Datuk Ismail Kassim turur mengumumkan perkara sama di sidang media di Kangar tengah hari tadi.
Sehubungan itu, Abdul Khalid memberitahu sidang akhbar di Shah Alam hari ini bahawa semua kawasan yang terlibat dengan catuan air akan memperolehi bekalan air seperti biasa bermula Khamis atau selewat-lewatnya Jumaat bagi kawasan bertekanan rendah.
Katanya, kerajaan negeri telah memaklumkan keputusan ini kepada Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd (SYABAS) untuk dipatuhi dan memastikan pengguna mendapat bekalan air seperti sediakala.
"Kerajaan negeri berpendapat tidak perlu menunggu empangan mencapai takungan 50 peratus kerana yakin usaha keras yang telah dilaksanakan seperti mengepam air kolam selain hujan berterusan di kawasan tadahan air akan meningkatkan lagi paras empangan.
"Justeru, kerajaan negeri dan pihak-pihak yang terlibat seperti LUAS, SPAN serta JPS akan terus memantau setiap hari perkembangan ini untuk memastikan paras empangan terus meningkat dan keputusan membatalkan perintah catuan ini akan dikaji dari semasa ke semasa," katanya.
Abdul Khalid berkata, beliau juga telah menulis surat kepada Menteri Pertahanan, Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Hussein pada 29 April bagi mendapatkan sokongan dan kebenaran Kerajaan Malaysia untuk kerajaan negeri menggunakan kepakaran Thailand menjalankan pembenihan awan menggunakan kaedah Ejectable Flare Rack.
"Berdasarkan maklumat yang diperolehi, terdapat sekatan untuk melakukan teknik ini kerana dipercayai mempunyai unsur-unsur yang mungkin memberi kesan kepada isu keselamatan negara.
"Pada masa yang sama, kerajaan negeri terus memperhebatkan usaha-usaha untuk menambah bekalan air terutama sebagai persediaan menghadapi musim kering yang panjang yang dijangka bermula akhir Mei hingga September," katanya.
JPS, tambahnya, telah membekalkan 10 pam air yang digunakan untuk mengepam air dari kolam dan hilir sungai ke Sungai Selangor.
"Peruntukan sejumlah RM10 juta disediakan oleh kerajaan negeri untuk membeli pam dan pembinaan intrastruktur bagi melakukan kerja-kerja pengepaman ini," katanya.
Pam itu juga, katanya, akan digunakan untuk mengepam air sungai yang berlebihan ke kolam takungan sebagai persiapan awal dan akan dipam semula ke sungai apabila musim kering.
"Dengan kaedah ini, pelepasan air daripada empangan akan lebih terkawal dan tempoh untuk empangan mencapai tahap kritikal dapat dilanjutkan antara 5 hingga 6 bulan.
"Kerajaan negeri juga akan meningkatkan kawalan keselamatan di kolam-kolam takungan dan menjadikan sekitar kawasan ini sebagai kawasan larangan khas," katanya.
Kolam-kolam sumber air alternatif itu, katanya, telahpun dikenalpasti LUAS sejak tahun 2009 lagi.
"Malah, pemantauan berkala dilakukan ke atas kolam-kolam ini melalui pensampelan yang dijalankan pada tahun 2011, 2012 dan juga 2013.
"Hasil pensampelan menunjukkan tiada unsur kimia dan logam berat yang ditemui dan kualiti air kolam-kolam ini mematuhi parameter yang telah ditetapkan oleh Jabatan Kesihatan Negeri Selangor.
"Kerajaan negeri memberi jaminan akan sentiasa menjaga keselamatan pengguna dan akan memberi maklumat penuh sekiranya terdapat keraguan terhadap penggunaan air kolam tersebut.
"Kerajaan negeri merayu agar semua rakyat mengamalkan penggunaan air terawat secara berhemah dengan menggunakan air hujan bagi aktiviti luar seperti membasuh kereta atau menyiram pokok.
SHAH ALAM, 29 APRIL: Angkatan Muda Keadilan (AMK) Selangor akan mengerahkan 10,000 anak muda untuk turun himpunan Cukai Barangan dan Perkhidmatan (GST), pada 1 Mei ini.
Ketua AMK, Azmizam Zaman Huri, berkata mobilisasi ke arah itu akan digerakkan secara aman bagi mengelakkan perkara yang tidak diingini berlaku.
"AMK negeri akan mobilisasi anggota dalam 10,000 orang," katanya menerusi sistem pesanan ringkas (SMS) kepada Selangor Kini, di sini, hari ini.
Sebelum ini, penganjur himpunan 1 Mei bagi membantah GST tidak berganjak daripada rancangan awal menjadikan Dataran Merdeka sebagai destinasi akhir yang dijadual bermula dari KLCC dan akan bergerak ke Dataran merdeka di ibu negara.
Jurucakap penganjur, S Arutchelvan mempertahankan tindakan itu atas alasan berpegang kepada Perlembagaan Persekutuan yang menjamin hak untuk berhimpun secara aman.
"Pihak kami mengadakan himpunan dan sambutan Hari Pekerja selaras dengan peruntukan dalam Perkara 10 Perlembagaan Negara iaitu hak untuk berhimpun secara aman dan tanpa senjata," katanya.
Sementara itu, Pas Malaysia (PPM) pula menggerakkan 50,000 anak muda untuk turun pada himpunan itu dengan Jabatan Amal Malaysia akan dipertanggungjawabkan menjaga keamanan lokasi serta keselamatan awam.
PPM memberi jaminan walaupun kehadiran anak muda yang besar jumlahnya, himpunan ini akan dijayakan dengan aman. PPM dengan bantuan tenaga AMAL dan Pemuda PAS memastikan tindakan provokasi, ganas, liar dan keterlaluan akan dielakkan.
"Sebaliknya, peserta himpunan akan mematuhi arahan pemimpin himpunan dan bersurai dengan aman sebaik ia selesai dijayakan," kata Setiausaha PPM, Mohd Nasai Ismail.
Perhimpunan 1 Mei adalah satu acara tahunan dianjur sejak 20 tahun lalu dan misi perhimpunan kali ini adalah untuk memberi tekanan kepada Kerajaan Pusat supaya menarik balik perlaksanaan Cukai Barangan dan Perkhidmatan (GST), yang akan dilaksanakan pada April 2015.
KUALA LUMPUR (April 28): The Edge Weekly, in a major expose on 1MDB today, has unearthed many questionable deals the state investment fund had been involved in and said 1MDB should bring home RM18.1 billion parked overseas.
The weekly began to probe the past deals of 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) after the controversial state fund released its later-than-expected FY2013 ended March 31 accounts and annual report.
The Edge Weekly, in its three-page cover story, said 1MDB's accounts have raised concerns about its billions, raised from issuing government-guaranteed bonds, managed by unnamed fund managers overseas.
The 1MDB accounts show that US$2.318 billion (RM7.88 billion) is now parked in Cayman Islands under a segregated portfolio company (SPC) few understand. Another US$3 billion (RM10.2 billion) has been placed with an unnamed overseas financial institution and half of this (US$1.58 billion or RM5.37 billion) is in various types of investment portfolios.
The weekly noted that IMDB "is sending money out even as it continues to issue more debts and borrow more to finance its various acquisitions". As at March 31, 2013, 1MDB had total borrowings of RM36 billion. Its annual debt service is RM1.6 billion.
"The pattern of 1MDB's borrowings vis-Ã -vis its acquisitions shows that it has actually been borrowing more than necessary," commented Ho Kay Tat, CEO of the Edge Group, in his column My Say.
Using graphics to trail 1MDB's money and its use, The Edge Weekly shows that the first RM5 billion raised by 1MDB in 2009 had been used to fund the activities of PetroSaudi International Ltd.
Even as 1MDB unwound its partnership with PetroSaudi, the latter never had to pay 1MDB cash upfront but always through interest bearing deferred payment schemes.
And when the partnership finally ended in September 2012, the money (US$2.318 billion by then) was not sent back home (although 1MDB was in need of funds and was issuing several rounds of debt paper). Instead it was parked under a SPC in Cayman Islands.
"This question must be asked of 1MDB: Why over-borrow only to send the excess cash out of the country? Besides, the 5.78% return it received from the Cayman SPC was just enough to pay the cost of funds of 5.75%.
As it stands, the only people who would have benefitted are the fund managers and the financial institutions, which will be paid for managing all the billions 1MDB has placed with them.
Given that it is taxpayers' money it is handling, it is time 1MDB is more transparent and accountable," commented Ho.
Back home, 1MDB also made three "strange" land-related transactions worth RM1.38 billion in Penang, revealed the Edge Weekly.
These deals included one sealed with Farlim Group (M) Bhd controlled by Chinese community leader Tan Sri Lim Gaik Tong. In this deal, 1MDB "entered into an agreement to acquire additional undivided shares in several plots of land" from Farlim for RM113 million.
The other two deals, totalling a whopping RM1.268 billion, only came to light in 1MDB's accounts for its financial year 2012 ended March 31 that were released last week after a one-year delay.
On 1MDB's financials, the Edge Weekly said without a revaluation gain of RM2.7 billion, 1MDB would have been in the red for its financial year ended March 2013, and its bleeding would have come from accumulation of RM42 billion in liabilities, including RM36 billion in borrowings, after just five years of existence.
In fact, 1MDB's after-tax profit of RM778.2 million (on revenue of RM2.6 billion) for FY2013 was the result of a land revaluation gain of RM2.7 billion, without which the company would have bled RM1.8 billion.
For more details on the major expose and unnerving tales on the management of funds by 1MDB, read The Edge Weekly (April 28 - May 4 issue). – theedgemalaysia.com
Dalam tempoh seminggu dari 23 April 2014 hingga hari ini 29 April 2014, jumlah takungan air di Empangan Sungai Selangor telah meningkat dari 38.97% (89.63 juta meter padu air) kepada 40.23% (92.53 juta meter padu air).
Walaupun jumlah ini belum mencecah paras 42% takungan seperti yang diumumkan sebelum ini, saya menyarankan Kerajaan Selangor menghentikan dahulu catuan air yang sedang dilaksanakan mengambil kira paras takungan di empangan-empangan lain yang tinggi.
Pada masa yang sama, saya menyeru penduduk di Lembah Klang supaya menggunakan air secara berhemah dan mengurangkan penggunaan seperti membasuh kereta yang terlalu kerap, melaporkan paip pecah secepat mungkin dan lain-lain agar penggunaan air dapat dikawal.
Ini memberi ruang kepada Kerajaan Selangor dan pihak yang bertanggungjawab membuat unjuran semula menggunakan kadar penggunaan air yang lebih rendah bagi mengelakkan catuan yang berpanjangan di masa hadapan.
Malaysia’s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim spoke to the Nation’s Group Editor-in-Chief Thepchai Yong in Kuala Lumpur last week prior to the visit of US President Barack Obama. He expressed his disappointment that Obama didn’t see him, criticised the Najib government for what he sees as a cover-up in its handling of missing flight MH370, compared the ongoing political situation in Thailand and Malaysia, and urged a more “aggressive” approach by the Malaysian government in helping Thailand seek a peaceful solution to the southern insurgency. Here are excerpts of the interview:
THEPCHAI: ARE YOU DISAPPOINTED THAT US PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA IS NOT SEEING YOU DURING HIS VISIT TO KUALA LUMPUR?
ANWAR: Our request is that the US stays consistent and coherent. The US ambassador has explained that the [Obama's Asian visit] doesn’t include meeting opposition leaders. I can’t complain because the US has consistently been in support of the democratic process, rule of law, and has taken up my case. In that sense, I appreciate it. But I find it difficult to accept that the Malaysian government can use the trade agreement [TPP] and business to pressure the president of the United States. That doesn’t go well for those fighting for freedom and reform.
SO YOU BELIEVE THE NAJIB GOVERNMENT WAS BEHIND THE DECISION OF THE US PRESIDENT NOT TO SEE YOU?
Yes, because their position has been clear. When I had programmes to see the president of Indonesia, Prime Minister Abhisit in Bangkok, or the visiting prime minister of Turkey, there were always problems and pressure. When they wanted to see me they were all stopped through diplomatic channels.
WHAT WOULD YOU WANT TO SAY TO PRESIDENT OBAMA IF YOU SEE HIM?
Be consistent with the American foreign policy in supporting reform agenda, transparent governments, democratic reforms. They have sent battalion after battalion of troops to Afghanistan and Iraq and also drones in the war on terrorism, and here they can’t be muted when the UMNO regime is using the court to deny my basic rights and those [rights] of other political leaders.
IT HAS BEEN TWO MONTHS SINCE THE DIS-APPEARANCE OF MH370 AND THERE ARE NO |INDICATIONS THAT THE PLANE WILL BE |LOCATED ANY TIME SOON. YOU HAVE SPOKEN OUT STRONGLY ON WHAT YOU SEE AS THE INEFFICIENCY AND INCOMPETENCE OF THE NAJIB GOVERNMENT. AND YOU HAVE ACCUSED THE GOVERNMENT OF A COVER-UP. WHAT IS YOUR THEORY ON THIS?
It’s a tragedy, not only for the crew members, the passengers and their families, but it also opens up some of the major flaws in our opaque system of governance. No transparency and accountability. It’s very difficult to understand what happened when there was a huge cover-up. I know the government is angry when I say that but I know about the radar which was procured when I was minister of finance. The Marconi system is a very sophisticated system comparable to the Thai radar system. And up to today, the government has not even released the cargo manifest of the flight except to say it was four tonnes of mangosteens . The Thais and Malaysians laugh about it because we know this is not the mangosteen season and you cannot get four tonnes off-season easily. The passenger list and the cargo manifest are there on all flights. Why are we hiding them? And there was also Interpol’s report of stolen passports and we overlook(ed) that.
SO YOU ARE SAYING THAT THERE ARE THINGS THAT THE GOVERNMENT KNOWS BUT IS NOT TELLING THE PUBLIC?
Sure. The radar issue is known to the government. The cargo manifest is also known to the government. These have happened in the past. We had a case some years back in which two jet engines went missing and no one was accountable. There was also the murder of a Mongolian model [which was linked to an aide of Prime Minister Najib] and there was no record when she came in, when she left. This tradition of an opaque |system of cover-up has happened many times in the past. But it was not of |interest to the international community until MH370.
WITH THE SOPHISTICATED RADAR SYSTEM YOU DON’T THINK THE PLANE COULD JUST DISAPPEAR INTO NOWHERE?
It was not possible. It is a very sophisticated radar at Gong Kedah [the air force facility in northern Malaysia]. It can read from the border of Thailand to central Malaya, South China Sea and Indian Ocean. If the objects were just kites I would understand. But if they are huge planes, even small planes like Cessna, flying low or high they can be easily detected. The Marconi replaced the old radar system which also could read but this one is much better. The air force staff might be asleep but … the beeps would be so loud that they must have been alerted and there would [be the] recording of the radar. The plane crossed five provinces, Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah, Perak, Penang our heartland. We have major security problems if the government says it cannot detect.
DO YOU HAVE YOUR OWN THEORY AS TO WHAT HAPPENED?
It’s concealing and cover-up.
FOR A PERIOD THE INCIDENT APPEARED TO BE POLITICISED WHEN THE FACT THAT THE FLIGHT CAPTAIN ZAHARIE AHMAD SHAH, WHO WAS A CARD-CARRYING MEMBER OF YOUR PARTY AND A DISTANT RELATIVE OF YOURS, WAS HIGHLIGHTED.
Seven hours after the decision of the court of appeals to convict me, Zaharie took off with the flight. I do not deny he is a card-carrying and active member of the party. He was known to have expressed his views against frauds in the elections and corruption in this country and supporting reforms. He supports democratic transition, free elections, which means he is against any form of extremist, fanatical or terrorist activities. They tried [to politicise the incident] for a few days but when the international media went after them to see how absurd, insane [it was ] of them to cast a suspicion like that they all backed off, saying they were not linking it to any political activities and Anwar was exploiting it. All UMNO blogs and Malaysian media made reference that Zaharie was a fanatical supporter of Anwar.
WHY DO FOREIGN MEDIA COME TO YOU, THE OPPOSITION LEADER, INSTEAD OF GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES TO GET INFORMATION AND COMMENTS ON THE MH370 INCIDENT?
They came to me because the government was trying to link Zaharie to me. But more important it was because there was a lack of transparency and accountability on the part of the government. The prime minister came for a press conference and refused to take questions. This is because they are familiar only with the UMNO-controlled and government-controlled compliant media which would not ask questions. But in this case, they had to face international media, not only The Nation, but CNN, BBC, Chinese and Indian media. They knew there were questions they could not answer. So because of the failure of Prime Minister Najib and the government’s flip-flopping they came to me. And fortunately, I happen to know about the radar. I know the system. I know the place. And I don’t deny that I know Zaharie, who is related to my daughter-in-law. But only because they are my relatives they cannot all be hijackers.
BUT CAN THE GOVERNMENT ALSO ACCUSE YOU OF TRYING TO POLITICISE THE INCIDENT?
They did because they thought I was getting the media attention. But I didn’t say anything beyond the facts. There are questions about the radar, the cargo manifest, the passports and the flip-flop answers. Nothing beyond that. The government has to address these questions but until today there are no answers to the questions of the radar, the cargo manifest and the passports. When they government is asked about the cargo, the answer is mangosteens. That’s why people resort to asking opposition leaders and asked me how I would handle the situation. My answer was that in one second I would decide to be transparent and tell them our problems and our weaknesses and what we would do. They twisted it and quoted me as saying that in one second I would solve all the problem.
THE MH370 INCIDENT HAS PUT MALAYSIA UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT THE WAY IT HAS NEVER SEEN BEFORE. BUT THERE ARE SUGGESTIONS THAT SUCH GLOBAL SCRUTINY MIGHT FORCE THE GOVERNMENT TO HAVE A SECOND THOUGHT ABOUT THROWING YOU BACK INTO JAIL. DO YOU SEE THAT POSSIBILITY?
I would be happy if that is a case. But we are not dealing with a democratic regime that is sensitive to the sentiments of the public and international community. We are dealing with a corrupt and opaque authoritarian regime that knows only brute force and power. They feel that if I am the threat, they will deal with the threat. The international media now are monitoring what is happening in Malaysia. So I think it would be immensely helpful because now people are looking at the court proceedings. I recently had lunch with the EU ambassadors and I had no need to brief them because they all followed the case [Anwar's trial] quite well, not from our media, of course, but from court proceedings. That is very much welcome because it creates awareness and it helps us.
WOULD YOU SAY THAT THE MAJORITY OF MALAYSIANS ARE NOT GETTING THE INFORMATION THEY WANT ABOUT MH370 FROM THE LOCAL MEDIA?
You are right. The local media always report information given them by the government. The UNMO says this is the best way we can handle the situation and we are being praised all over the world. But according to the latest survey, 54 per cent of Malaysian say their handling of MH370 crisis was very poor. They blame the government for that.
SO WHAT YOU SAY TO INTERNATIONAL MEDIA DOES NOT GET REPORTED BY THE LOCAL MEDIA?
Never. Even during the election. My role as the opposition leader was completely erased and I didn’t even have one minute of airtime on our national television.
SINCE PRIME MINISTER NAJIB CAME TO POWER, MALAYSIA HAS SLIDED DOWN THE MEDIA FREEDOM INDEX. ACCORDING TO THE LATEST INDEX COMPILED BY INTERNATIONAL MEDIA ORGANISATION REPORTERS WITHOUT FRONTIERS, MALAYSIA IS DOING WORSE THAN MYANMAR. CAN IT BE THAT BAD?
It’s true. At least Aung San Suu Kyi was given half an hour of airtime to speak on national television prior to the election. The [Myanmar] media can report bits about opposition parties from time to time. But here it’s zero. Not only that, they [Malaysia media] demonise you. In newspapers, you are [a] one-time Chinese agent, and then Al-Quaeda, [a] Jewish agent or a sex pervert, or [an] Indonesian agent. But they have not called me a Thai agent yet.
FORMER PRIME MINISTER MAHATHIR MOHAMMED, WHO WAS MOST INSTRUMENTAL FOR YOUR POLITICAL MISFORTUNE, HAS ALSO COMPLAINED ABOUT THE LACK OF MEDIA FREEDOM IN MALAYSIA. ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THE SAME TIME?
Of course. He is talking about the prominence he should get but he forgets the fact that he is no longer the prime minister and thinks what he says should get reported on national television. But no criticisms of Mahathir get reported in the media, either about corruption or the fact that his son controls Petronas contracts and is a multi-billionaire. These things are never covered by the media. But the fact that he criticises it [the lack of media freedom] is something positive. In a direct hit today against Najib he said “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. I think this is timely advice.
DO YOU THINK MAHATHIR STILL WIELDS ANY INFLUENCE IN UMNO THESE DAYS?
He has [a] small influence. Combined with former finance minister Tun Daim and others who are billionaires, they can fund a lot of civil society operations and can get a lot of people to attend activities. But I don’t believe they wield a lot of influence, even within the ruling party. One evidence is [that] when he contested to be a delegate to a UMNO meeting he lost. And his son also lost his bid for vice presidency of the party. Of course, that made him very angry.
IN HIS MEMOIRS, MAHATHIR MADE IT CLEAR HE STILL HOLDS GRUDGES AGAINST YOU. WHAT ABOUT YOU?
I am a forward-looking person. I was bitter and was in prison for eight years. But I have to move on. Mahathir has done something positive for the country too but has destroyed institutions in the process – the media, the judiciary, the corruption. His children are billionaires and there are cronies. Unfortunately, he still has this mindset of the past. His bitterness is clear. I don’t think I want to be like that. You have to overcome not only fear but also anger. If your intention is to be in power like Mahathir, full of hatred and venom, I don’t think you would have time to lead the country.
HE HAS HAD HIS DAYS BUT WHY WOULD HE STILL WANT TO BE BITTER AND VENGEFUL?
I think most retired dictators have the same problem. They still want to dictate. For 20 years you are the authoritarian leader, you want people to listen and obey, not to question. So even after retirement, he cannot accept the fact that people oppose him and … Anwar criticises him in public. Things like these are still eating into him. I feel sorry for him. He should have peace and tranquillity and move [on], be a statesman. But he has his strengths too. I don’t deny the hard work, the vision and other things he has done, including the latitude given to me to function as [a] minister of many portfolios.
NOW YOU ARE FACING THE PROSPECT OF GOING BACK TO JAIL. ARE YOU FEARFUL?
You get on with time and you are no longer young. You have been through what you thought was [the] worst. But because you continue to persevere on the path of freedom and, of course, you have to battle against the corrupted and the unjust. I have overcome fear. I was in London a fortnight ago for a conference with former Vice President Al Gore, former Irish President Mary Robinson and other personalities. All of them advised me to stay back in London because there is no point going to jail.
STAYING BACK MEANS SEEKING EXILE?
Yes, seeking exile. Going back means you are not going to get a fair trial. They know I will be condemned to jail. But I, without hesitation, decided to come back. This is my country.
BUT THIS IS PROBABLY WHAT THE NAJIB GOVERNMENT WANTS TOO.
Yes, they prefer to see me out of the country. But I, all my life, I am here fighting for reforms. We are lacking behind in many ways. We used to be better economically but we have lost out. Despite all the political commotion, the battles between the red and yellow shirts, the Thai economy is still moving, albeit at a slower pace. But we are behind because of the issues of governance and endemic corruption. So I believe people like me have a small role to play. But I have to overcome fear. And overcome fear to me is a great achievement.
AND WHAT ABOUT YOUR SUPPORTERS. DO THEY WANT YOU TO STAY TO LEAD THE FIGHT FROM WITHIN THE COUNTRY?
Even many of my supporters who are passionate about reforms feel that they can accept if I chose to stay overseas because they would be disheartened if I have to endure [a] prison sentence again. But I told them I am here, committed.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT? YOU LOST A CHANCE TO CONTEST IN THE BY-ELECTION IN SELANGOR THAT WOULD HAVE PROVIDED YOU WITH A SPRINGBOARD FOR A BIGGER POLITICAL [MOVE] AND YOU ARE NOW FACING A PROSPECT OF GOING BACK TO JAIL.
Que sera sera. What will be will be. But we shouldn’t believe that authoritarian and corrupt leaders have the final say. I will continue to persevere inside or outside prison. We trust [the] wisdom of the people. Without the media, without the resources and with electoral frauds we still won 52 per cent of the popular vote. Can you imagine if the election was free, if I had an hour of airtime on television. We would easily have garnered 60 per cent. Everybody says that and some observers say we would have got a minimum of 58 per cent, which would be seen as a resounding victory. But it did not happen because everybody knows there were electoral frauds. Can you call it a democratic election when we didn’t have even one minute of airtime?
IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE ELECTION LAST YEAR, YOU WERE ABLE TO BRING HUGE CROWDS TO STREET PROTESTS AND RALLIES. BUT THEY EVENTUALLY FIZZLED OUT. DOES THAT MEAN YOU HAVE ACCEPTED THE ELECTION RESULT AS A FAIT ACCOMPLI?
Our decision was to have rallies, not street demonstrations. Rallies mean we assembled and departed at eleven. Some rallies were huge, something unprecedented. Though we registered for the rallies we were taken to court and were penalised and had to pay millions. Like in Ukraine and Bangkok, those were the only options we had then. At that point we thought they had sent powerful enough a message and decided to back off a bit, hoping that Najib would respond to a dialogue. Unlike the Thai situation, we the opposition are calling for a dialogue and conciliation. There was no response. I have been opposition leader since 2008 and cannot get an appointment to see the prime minister even once.
BUT AREN’T THERE VOICES OF REASON WITHIN THE GOVERNMENT OR THE RULING PARTY THAT SEE THE NEED FOR DIALOGUE THAT WILL HELP MOVE THE COUNTRY FORWARD?
I believe there are elements within UMNO, probably [a] small minority, that share some of these concerns. But we are talking about a system that is autocratic and authoritarian, which does not allow dissidence within the establishment. Being seen talking to the opposition is considered a sign of weakness. When you have a prime minister who gave a press conference but not taking questions, how do you expect him to meet me? It is difficult to imagine that will happen.
FOR A WHILE PRIME MINISTER NAJIB WAS SEEN AS A MORE LIBERAL LEADER WITHIN UMNO, SIGNALLING A WILLINGNESS TO SCALE BACK SOME OF THE RACE-BASED ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICIES AND LAWS THAT ARE SEEN AS AUTHORITARIAN.
He did talk about transformation programmes, well-crafted policies to show that he understands some issues, the need for economic competition and to end some of the race-based policies. But they were crafted by international consultants that he employed and paid 17 million ringgits (Bt170 million baht). They were the same group that advised Nigeria and Kazakhstan. So good luck. But beyond that he did not make any efforts.
BUT SHOULDN’T THE RESULT OF LAST YEAR’S ELECTION HAVE COME AS A RUDE AWAKENING FOR THE RULING COALITION?
Based on the essence of their policy, clearly there is no change. As you said, any reasonable persons looking at the election result, with the cheating and the media control, you still managed to get only 47 per cent of the votes. You should shift so that you will be popular, more transparent. In fact, when the ethnic Chinese and Indian chose to support the opposition, the first reaction from Najib was “what more do the Chinese want?” And following that he strengthened the pro-Malay policy. The Malay policy is designed to benefit their family members and cronies, not the poor marginalised Malays.
YOU HAVE BEEN TALKING CONSISTENTLY ABOUT PROBLEMS OF CORRUPTION AND CRONYISM BUT NOTHING SEEMS TO HAVE CHANGED.
No. But there is a better understanding of the issue. Corruption was not a major issue in our culture or elections but now it’s one of the top issues. People see that once you are in the political leadership or prime minister you automatically become billionaires. The contracts are opaque, no tender bids. Privatisation means to prioritise to your families and your cronies. In that sense, we are successful because the awareness has shot up.
YOU WERE INSTRUMENTAL IN UNITING THE OPPOSITION PARTIES BUT AS YOU SAID YOU ARE NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER AND FACING A PROSPECT OF BEING JAILED. HOW DO YOU SEE THE FUTURE OF THE OPPOSITION WHEN YOU WILL BE NOT PLAYING AN ACTIVE POLITICAL ROLE FOR WHATEVER REASONS?
Political leaders tend to think they are invincible and irreplaceable. But you can be successful only when you are able to give exposure and train new leaders. In our party, across all ethnic groups, we have a growing number of young team members in their 40s and 30s who show the capacity to be effective and articulate leaders with a clear vision for reform, freedom and justice. I am, therefore, very much encouraged by this trend. I don’t think this is just an Anwar’s role. Yes, given the circumstances, I did my part. The coalition parties are quite cemented and strong. It will be difficult to break them.
THAI PEOPLE HAVE TAKEN A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF YOUR REFORMASI. THEY ARE TAKING TO THE STREETS ON A REFORM AND CHANGE PLATFORM – SOMETHING YOU STARTED MANY YEARS BACK. BUT THE RULING PARTY INSISTS ON ELECTORAL. DO YOU SEE ANY SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE SITUATIONS IN THAILAND AND MALAYSIA?
Lots of similarities, because the demands for change and reform are more comprehensive. It’s not just elections. In Iraq, the fault of US policy was its obsession with elections. The institutional governance was not in place, there was no free media or independent judiciary and strong emphasis on education. When you talk about free and fair elections in Malaysia, which are neither free nor fair, you also talk about free media, independent judiciary and the level of understanding of politics and policies so that people can judge the political leadership.
THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THAILAND WHO BELIEVE THEY CAN BRING ABOUT CHANGES THROUGH STREET PROTESTS AND THERE ARE THOSE WHO BELIEVE CHANGES SHOULD BE MADE THROUGH BALLOT BOXES. HOW WOULD YOU COMPARE WHAT HAPPENS IN THAILAND WITH THE SITUATION IN MALAYSIA?
You are going through what I have gone through. I understand the Thai phenomenon and the reformasi in Jakarta. At least in Thailand the media does give some latitude to both sides but in Malaysia we don’t have that. In elections as they are, if I have one billion dollars in my constituency I am going to win. So you must start by making sure that the electoral process is clean, there is public education, there are strong electoral laws against electoral frauds, laws against abuse of power and corrupt practices. I think all these must be in place, otherwise you will have one or two big conglomerates funding and winning elections.
SO ELECTIONS ARE NOT THE ONLY ANSWER TO PROBLEMS THAT COUNTRIES LIKE THAILAND AND MALAYSIA ARE FACING?
Election is one of the fundamental pillars but not the only answer. We would require public education, access to the media, and independent judiciary. So it’s a whole paraphernalia that would be required in establishing a democratic system of governance.
MALAYSIA HAS HELPED FACILITATE PEACE DIALOGUE IN SOUTHERN THAILAND BUT THE TALKS HAVE STALLED, LARGELY BECAUSE OF THE ONGOING POLITICAL CONFLICT IN THAILAND. WHAT ROLE DO YOU THINK MALAYSIA SHOULD PLAY IN HELPING TO BRING ABOUT PEACE IN SOUTHERN THAILAND?
I have always called for rapprochement, dialogue between the two parties with the involvement of Bangkok directly. Malaysia must be more aggressive in sending out a clear message that we want a peaceful resolution. There seems to be contradictory and conflicting messages from Malaysia. I know many of the people in Pattani and various groups on the border. A number of times I mentioned to my colleagues in Bangkok the issues of poverty and marginalisation. But we should not compromise on the need for a peaceful resolution. They are all Thais and violence is not the answer. I am not saying the problems are perpetrated by the Thais or because of excesses by the military in the past. But sometimes they are criminal acts using the facade of insurgency by the Pattani movement. I must say that Bangkok’s initiative must be supported clearly and aggressively by the Malaysian government. The Malaysian government must also utilise people that are credible. They cannot have people that even some people in Pattani would question. They must have people who are credible and committed to a peaceful resolution. They must be prepared to surrender arms. And there must be concession in terms of their rights, their language, culture and religion, which I believe are clearly defined in the Thai constitution and supported by most who believe in democracy and freedom in Thailand. What I want to say is that Malaysia must be more aggressive in supporting Thai initiative.
BUT HOW AGGRESSIVE CAN MALAYSIA BE?
Those groups that we have some influence in, we can help convey their legitimate demands to our friends in Thailand. But we must also be firm in suggesting [to] them that in no way will we condone armed insurrection or violence.
Anwar Ibrahim on Malaysia's mishandling of MH370, President Obama, and good Jews and bad Jews.
Malaysia’s embattled opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim may not be meeting Barack Obama when the U.S. president visits Kuala Lumpur on April 26-27, but he has a message for him: Ibrahim’s party won the 2013 election in this Muslim country of 30 million people, and Obama’s meeting with the wrong guy.
“How is it conceivable that the U.S. government could ignore the massive election fraud in Malaysia?” Anwar asked. “I would like to see the United States remain consistent and coherent in their policy of supporting democracy. Sending drones to Afghanistan for democracy, and ignoring that I garnered 52 percent of the popular vote? We won!” he said in a phone interview with Foreign Policy on April 17.
Ibrahim was Malaysia’s deputy prime minister and finance minister until he ran afoul of the long-serving former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad. The political conflict led to a 1998 conviction on sodomy and corruption charges, followed by 6 years in solitary confinement. In 2008, Ibrahim put together an opposition coalition that he claims would have won the 2013 government election, had the elections been fair — which the ruling government, helmed by current Prime Minister Najib Razak disputes. Convicted again of sodomy in March — an almost certainly politically motivated overturning of an earlier acquittal — Anwar may face another long spell in prison. “Remind people that I won’t be free for long,” he told FP. (The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
Foreign Policy: If you had been prime minister, how would you have handled the MH370 inquiry differently?
Anwar Ibrahim: Although the media here is completely controlled by the government, Malaysia is not. I would say that given this situation, the issue is how you manage a crisis. You must remain consistent with your statements. And transparent! Otherwise, nobody will trust you.
Why is the government concealing critical information about the radar? Or the passenger manifest of those who use stolen passports! Why is the cargo manifest not made public, knowing very well that is relevant? What are we hiding?
Mangosteens are not in season — but Malaysian Airlines confirmed they had three to four tons of mangosteens on board. The Thais didn’t have it now, nor did the Indonesians — so how on Earth did they get all of these mangosteens?
All of these contradictions have caused a lot of concern — that the government is concealing information, and even worse, misleading.
It is very difficult to understand that in this day and age you can have a huge plane and not detect it.
FP: Do you think Prime Minister Najib [Razak] knows where the plane is?
AI: I don’t think so. I don’t know. But what is questionable is why are they now concealing relevant information. What sort of integrity can we have when we can’t release this critical information?
FP: U.S. President Barack Obama will meet with Prime Minister Razak on Saturday. Would you like Obama to mention your situation to him?
AI: The United States is more preoccupied with TPP [the Trans-Pacific Partnership] and international trade than issues of freedom and repression. It’s not an issue if Obama meets me or not. But if you preach democracy, you have to be consistent.
Unlike most countries, the prime minister and foreign minister would take any steps to not let any foreign leader to see me. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said to me, “I’ll meet you in Ankara, it’s too much hassle to meet you in Kuala Lumpur!”
FP: And if Obama wanted to meet with you in KL?
AI: I would be surprised that the U.S. president can be dictated to by Malaysian protocols.
FP: Malaysia lacks diplomatic relations with Israel. What would it take for you to establish them?
AI: I was hammered by the government here for what I told the Wall Street Journal in a January 2012 interview: I was attacked as pro-Jew, pro-Israel.
The ruling partyalready hangs my picture saying all the Jews — Robert Rubin, Madeleine Albright, Paul Wolfowitz — are Anwar’s friends! And that is quite effective. My photograph with [former World Bank President] Wolfowitz is in many villages around Malaysia.
I make no apologies about them being my friends — they are good Jews! There are good Muslims and bad Muslims, just like good Jews and bad Jews. I choose the good Jews.
If I’m a friend of Bob Rubin, he was secretary of the treasury — yes, he’s a friend, what’s the problem?
In the United States, APCO and other public relations firms portray me as anti-Semitic. I have taken a large beating through Najib’s hiring of APCO as his consultant. As you know, they have been involved in Nigeria and Kazakhstan in the past, and the highest paid is Malaysia — $20 million in one go!
I don’t have a problem with the government using APCO — but why must they use paid bloggers, journalists, to demonize me in the United States? [APCO did work for the government of Malaysia until 2010. In an emailed statement, Adam Williams, APCO's global media relations manager wrote that "we have never worked to portray Mr. Anwar as anti-Semitic. We have never taken editorial control over or paid bloggers or journalists to write stories. It is against our code of conduct as a firm."]
So I will be very careful: I continue to support the plight of the Palestinians. It is important for Israel to recognize the plight of Palestinians, and recognize their rights. And contingent on this we can explore with countries such as Turkey, Qatar and Indonesia the right way to engage with Israel.
FP: Last summer, Prime Minister Razak responded to a question about the Arab Spring in Malaysia by saying there was “no basis for people to go onto the streets.” Do you believe that?
AI: He’s presiding over an authoritarian regime with no free media, a compromised judiciary — and all of this is being exposed. Naturally he would sound like Hosni Mubarak!
I would frankly concede that the government is not as blatantly dictatorial or cruel as Mubarak’s. We have better infrastructure and investment is coming. But its authoritarian manner, endemic corruption — that’s why people are talking about going to a major rally on May 1.
FP: Why were you accused of sodomy — why that particular crime?
AI: I am clean, so they had to resort to something that conservative Muslims would find distasteful. It has been used by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein against his opponents. Even Hitler in one case, if I’m not mistaken. It’s convenient.
They can haul up young guys and get them to say it — with not a shred of evidence! No witnesses!
I should add: No one should be above the law. But that sodomy law is obsolete because it is rarely used except against me or other opposition leaders. Second, you have to produce evidence! It’s shocking.
FP: Back to political matters, how would your policies towards China differ from Prime Minister Najib’s?
AI: The position of the government is purely trade and business, and soft on China.
While we are very [much in favor of] strong relations, our position on issues on human rights is certainly more pronounced.
I have personally taken a position on Uighurs in China — we have appealed to the international community to be cognizant that the Uighurs have a right to be heard. We have evidence of abuses and oppression towards them. Our position has always been to encourage China to give them their rights.
FP: If you were Malaysia’s prime minister and were meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, would you bring up the case of the imprisoned Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo?
AI: I would certainly — in a polite, nuanced way. We are a small country, and we are not in a position to provoke. But it would be unacceptable for me, after being imprisoned for morethan 7 years of my adult life, and completely insensitive to ignore the plight of prisoners of conscience.
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