Rules for Thinking with Tech

June 19, 2013

MY COMMENT: Welcome to the World of smart and tech savvy kids. Old geezers like me are passe. Why? First technology scares me. Maybe at my age, I have become a slow learner tech wise. That makes me fearful of computers and gadgets. Trust them, No. I prefer to rely on my common sense and inborn faculties, flawed as they may be. I imagine what happens when we are overly dependent on computers and related technology for doing business and accessing information when the system breaks down or keeping in touch with family, friends and associates.

I have experienced  situations when the system break downs in my friendly bank. The staff will apologise profusely, but the bottom line is that I can’t do business with the bank until the system is restored. It could take a few hours or days to sort out the bugs. What happens? Second, how to deal with information overload and you can’t separate fact from fiction. Read the ‘wrong’ stuff, you end up getting screwed up with your thinking.

As in all things, we must not be overly dependent on technology. People to people contact remains the most reliable way of communicating. It reminds us that we are human, not some robot devoid of personal and social skills. Educators beware. Pers0nal and social skills development must remain the priority. My friends, CLF and Frank, Hamzah et.al may have something to say on technology and its uses. –Din Merican

by Annie Murphy Paul (06-17-13) <anniempaul@gmail.com>

Is technology making us stupid—or smarter than we’ve ever been? Author Nicholas Carr memorably made the case for the former in his 2010 book The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. This fall we’ll have a rejoinder of sorts from writer Clive Thompson, with his book Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds For The Better.

My own take: technology can make us smarter or stupider, and we need to develop a set of principles to guide our everyday behavior, making sure that tech is improving and not impeding our mental processes. Today I want to propose one such principle, in response to the important question: What kind of information do we need to have stored in our heads, and what kind can we leave “in the cloud,” to be accessed as necessary?

The answer will determine what we teach our students, what we expect our employees to know, and how we manage our own mental resources. But before I get to that answer, I want to tell you about the octopus who lives in a tree.

In 2005, researchers at the University of Connecticut asked a group of seventh graders to read a website full of information about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, or Octopus paxarbolis. The Web page described the creature’s mating rituals, preferred diet, and leafy habitat in precise detail. Applying an analytical model they’d learned, the students evaluated the trustworthiness of the site and the information it offered.

Their judgment? The tree octopus was legit. All but one of the pupils rated the website as “very credible.” The headline of the university’s press release read, “Researchers Find Kids Need Better Online Academic Skills,” and it quoted Don Leu, professor of education at UConn and co-director of its New Literacies Research Lab, lamenting that classroom instruction in online reading is “woefully lacking.”

There’s something wrong with this picture, and it’s not just that the arboreal octopus is, of course, a fiction, presented by Leu and his colleagues to probe their subjects’ Internet savvy. The other fable here is the notion that the main thing these kids need—what all our kids really need—is to learn online skills in school. It would seem clear that what Leu’s seventh graders really require is knowledge: some basic familiarity with the biology of sea-dwelling creatures that would have tipped them off that the website was a whopper (say, when it explained that the tree octopus’s natural predator is the sasquatch).

But that’s not how an increasingly powerful faction within education sees the matter. They are the champions of “new literacies”—or “21st century skills” or “digital literacy” or a number of other faddish-sounding concepts. In their view, skills trump knowledge, developing “literacies” is more important than learning mere content, and all facts are now Google-able and therefore unworthy of committing to memory.

There is a flaw in this popular account. Robert Pondiscio, executive director at the nonprofit organization CitizenshipFirst  (and a former fifth-grade teacher), calls it the “tree octopus problem”: even the most sophisticated digital literacy skills won’t help students and workers navigate the world if they don’t have a broad base of knowledge about how the world actually operates. “When we fill our classrooms with technology and emphasize these new ‘literacies,’ we feel like we’re reinventing schools to be more relevant,” says Pondiscio. “But if you focus on the delivery mechanism and not the content, you’re doing kids a disservice.”

Indeed, evidence from cognitive science challenges the notion that skills can exist independent of factual knowledge. Dan Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, is a leading expert on how students learn. “Data from the last thirty years leads to a conclusion that is not scientifically challengeable: thinking well requires knowing facts, and that’s true not only because you need something to think about,” Willingham has written. “The very processes that teachers care about most—critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem solving—are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory (not just found in the environment).”

Just because you can Google the date of Black Tuesday doesn’t mean you understand why the Great Depression happened or how it compares to our recent economic slump. And sorting the wheat from the abundant online chaff requires more than simply evaluating the credibility of the source (the tree octopus material was supplied by the “Kelvinic University branch of the Wild Haggis Conservation Society,” which sounded impressive to the seventh graders in Don Leu’s experiment). It demands the knowledge of facts that can be used to independently verify or discredit the information on the screen.

There is no doubt that the students of today, and the workers of tomorrow, will need to innovate, collaborate and evaluate, to name three of the “21st century skills” so dear to digital literacy enthusiasts. But such skills can’t be separated from the knowledge that gives rise to them. To innovate, you have to know what came before. To collaborate, you have to contribute knowledge to the joint venture. And to evaluate, you have to compare new information against knowledge you’ve already mastered.

So here’s a principle for thinking in a digital world, in two parts: First, acquire a base of fact knowledge in any domain in which you want to perform well. This base supplies the essential foundation for building skills, and it can’t be outsourced to a search engine.

Second: Take advantage of computers’ invariant memory, but also the brain’s elaborative memory. Computers are great when you want to store information that shouldn’t change—say, the date and time of that appointment next week. A computer (unlike your brain, or mine) won’t misremember the time of the appointment as 3 PM instead of 2 PM. But brains are the superior choice when you want information to change, in interesting and useful ways: to connect up with other facts and ideas, to acquire successive layers of meaning, to steep for a while in your accumulated knowledge and experience and so produce a richer mental brew.

That’s one principle for thinking in a digital world; over the next few months I’ll be introducing others. Now, your turn: Have you discovered any rules for using your mind in a world full of technology?

Khairy Jamaluddin: Back in the Spotlight

June 15, 2013

MY COMMENT: Oxford educated Khairy Jamaluddin is the spokesman of international media for the Najib administration. Never underestimate his political resilience.

The Prime Minister’s Department is now like The White House, where the spokesman manages press relations. This is a good move since KJ is charismatic, intelligent and articulate; he has a way with words, an essential quality of any spokesman. It is also a reward for his patience and service to UMNO in particular for his support of Prime Minister Najib who is fighting to keep job as Party President and Prime Minister. 

It is  difficult to tell what effect this appointment will have on Najib’s political fortune. But I believe that KJ is astute enough to use this opportunity to further strengthen his position in UMNO and the Najib Administration. He is our man to watch in UMNO, and I congratulate and wish him well.–Din Merican

by The Malaysian Insider (06-14-13) @http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

Not too long ago, he was sidelined by the UMNO-owned media, vilified as a member of the infamous Fourth Floor and deemed untrustworthy by the Najib administration.

All in all, he was headed for political mediocrity. Not anymore. Today, Khairy Jamaluddin is the go to guy for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak. Appointed Minister of Youth and Sports, he has also been named government spokesman of international media.

In return, the son-in-law of former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Badawi has become a loyal cheerleader for the PM at a time when there is roiling debate on the PM’s strategy and performance at GE13 and growing discourse on whether there should a no-contest for the top UMNO position at the coming polls.

It is notable that many UMNO bloggers with a fondness for the Mahathir era have called for contest for the top two positions and The Malaysian Insider has learnt that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has also communicated to Najib the need for democracy to thrive in UMNO. In contrast, the mainstream media, under direction from Putrajaya, has been sourcing comments and quotes from the likes of Khairy and other UMNO politicians supporting a no-contest, a move which will keep Najib as UMNO President.

Sources in Putrajaya told The Malaysian Insider that in addition to being close to Najib, Khairy now enjoys good ties with the First Lady, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, a seismic change from sometime ago.

So how did the change from outcast to insider happen? Government officials say that Najib’s camp were initially wary of Khairy’s ambitious streak and political allegiance. The PM’s advisors also were mindful of Mahathir’s antipathy towards Khairy and Abdullah, with the former PM believing that his legacy was damaged by the Pak Lah-Khairy combination.

But Khairy hunkered down and just concentrated on political programmes, stayed below the radar and made it clear that his loyalty was to Najib. His upward fortunes have also been helped by the fact that he was one of a few BN politicians who emerged from the polls with a commanding majority and with a rare commodity in UMNO these days: the ability to speak and write proficiently in English.

Najib’s advisors also believe that in the run-up to the party polls, it will be important to bring as many “fighters and orators” into his camp, especially if there is a challenge to the top position in the party.

This thinking explains why the likes of Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim, Datuk Tajudin Rahman, Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Mansor, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz were rewarded with positions as Ministers and Deputy Ministers.

Khairy, apart from being given the task of putting together programmes to win over younger Malaysians and help cobble together a better image for Malaysia in international media, is also expected to shore up support for the PM among UMNO politicians who will be voting in the party polls in October.

By giving Khairy a place at the main table, there is also a hope that UMNO politicians loyal to Abdullah Badawi will also fall in line and throw their support behind Najib.

As a political strategy and a reward system for a politician who has stayed the course, promoting Khairy is sound. But it is also a path fraught with some craters. The UMNO Youth chief is still persona no grata on Mahathir’s list and his higher profile may provoke a stinging response from the former PM, a complication Najib and UMNO can do without.

Bloggers and Media Users Prefer Self-Regulation

June 5, 2013

by http://www.nst.com.my

The Internet laws imposed in countries like China, Iran and Singapore are too harsh and should not be implemented in Malaysia, say bloggers and media analysts.

They felt that social media users should practise self-regulation and be prepared to face the music should their postings breach the accepted norms of the freedom of speech.

There were also those who felt that the formation of an independent body or institution to curb the emerging trend of social media users openly instigating and promoting hatred and chaos in cyberworld could assist in self-regulation.

Blog House Malaysia  Adviser Datuk Ahirudin Attan said calls for by certain quarters to monitor and impose Internet laws as practised by China and Iran would be akin to killing an ant with a hammer.

“It would be unfair to the majority of social media users, who use the platform wisely and they shouldn’t be punished for the recklessness of a handful few who don’t.”

Ahirudin, more popularly known as Rocky’s Bru, said emulating Singapore, which announced recently that news-based websites would be required to obtain a licence to operate, was also not the best option.

“We are far more advanced in terms of online freedom compared with Singapore and we shouldn’t fully follow the laws implemented by our neighbour.In the end, it boils down to the individuals themselves who should exercise control over their postings and be ready to face the authorities should they breach it.”

The Singapore Media Development Authority (MDA) had announced new rules stipulating that websites that had at least 50,000 unique visitors from the republic state every month and published at least one local news article per week over a period of two months must obtain an annual licence.

Websites granted a licence will have to remove “prohibited content” such as articles that undermine “racial or religious harmony” within 24 hours of being notified by the authorities

Licensed websites will also have to put up S$50,000 (RM123,000) as a “performance bond” that can be forfeited if the regulations are not followed. This, however, has not gone down well with the online community, which raised, among others, the fear that bloggers would also be required to comply.

Ahirudin, a former journalist and editor, said Malaysia should mull the setting up of an independent body akin to the media council in the United Kingdom.

“The council should be formed with the help of the government and headed by a former media practitioner or someone of stature, like a judge or the head of a non-governmental organisation (NGO).It has to run independently and the council will decide on if an offence had been committed.”

Ahirudin said once this had been ascertained, it was up to the authorities to mete out the necessary action. “Restricting the Internet will only make matters worse. The government has to adhere to its promise of not censoring the Internet but come up with other solutions. At the same time, we should educate the youngsters and remind the elders that posting such materials online will only put them in trouble.”

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s School of Media and Communication senior lecturer, Dr Sabariah Mohamed Salleh, said it was “too harsh” to block social media sites.

“Too many restrictions can make people retaliate. There should be rules and laws to curb this growing problem but, at the same time, I feel that one can never fully control the social media,”

Sabariah questioned how laws similar to those imposed in China, Iran and Singapore could be used to restrict Malaysians living abroad posting slanderous remarks.

“What about those living abroad? They’re not in the country, so how are you going to restrict the things they post?” She, however, felt that Singapore’s Internet laws were a good example to follow but stressed that a thorough research had to be carried out to find out the best way to curb users from posting slanderous materials online.

Blogger Helen Ang echoed Ahirudin’s sentiment, saying that the onus of accountability fell on the social media user.”This is becoming a social problem. Defamation will be there, but users must be able to back their postings and be ready to face punishment according to the law should they commit an offence.”

Ang also disagreed with following the footsteps of China and Iran in imposing Internet laws.

Blogger Y.L. Chong said it was impossible to impose such rulings.”It would not be right to benchmark us against China which still struggles to fully contain the materials posted online despite the power-house’s resources and manpower.

“Should we review the laws, we should benchmark against the likes of those imposed in the United States and UK so that we can aspire to higher standards,”

Chong also explained that in order to fully monitor and restrict the Internet, the country needed an immense amount of resource and manpower.

“If China can’t do it, how can we? Huge volumes are posted daily on social media sites. It will be unthinkable to monitor everything,”

He said social media users must be educated on what they could post and what they shouldn’t.”The same rules and regulations imposed for the mainstream media should be used for the social media.”

Tun Dr. Mahathir: UMNO tidak relevan lagi

June 5, 2013

KOMEN: UMNO tidak relevan? Memang tepat sekali ! UMNO (1946) berbeza dengan  UMNO Baru (1987) yang ditubuhkan oleh Tun Dr. Mahathir sendiri dengan perlembagaan parti yang tidak bercorak demokrasi.

At RSGC

Kuasa di bawah Presiden UMNO tidak boleh di cabar seterusnya. Tun ingin memegang kuasa selamanya tetap beliau “bersara” dari aktif berpolitik kononnya dari tahun 2003.

Sekarang ini amat sukar untuk ahli UMNO memilih Presiden dan Timbalannya akibat manipulasi Tun yang begitu ghairah untuk menyandang kuasa sebagai Perdana Menteri selama mungkin. Kriteria yang diguna pakai  menjadi peminpin bukan lagi kebolehan. UMNO sekarang ini adalah parti  pengampu, feudal dan  dinasti.

Ini lah yang berlaku apabila TDM dipaksa melepaskan jawatan, beliau memilih AAB yang kemudian dikritik beliau sehebat hebatnya. Malah PM sekarang juga adalah dari senario yang sama.

Kesimpulannya UMNO hancur disebabkan oleh kerakusan beliau untuk berkuasa dan dikelilingi oleh mereka mereka yang kurang cerdik dan yang jadi kaki ampu. Jangan putar belitkan sejarah yang “direka” oleh beliau sendiri. Beliau sendiri yang suka memperlekeh pemimpin pemimpin UMNO .

Selain dari itu beliau juga memusnahkan sistem kerajaan dengan memilih mereka yang menyokong dasar-dasar  beliau sahaja. Ini bermula dari pemilihan Tun Ahmad Sarji sebagai Ketua Setiausaha Negara yang menurut perintah beliau dan juga Gabenor Bank Negara Jaafar Hussein. (Sebelum itu beliau tidak berani menyentuh Bank Negara kerana Gabenor Bank Negara seperti Tun Ismail Ali dan Tan Sri Aziz Taha tidak mengendahkan tuntutan beliau kerana perlantikan mereka dalah dari DYMM Agung).

Begitu juga kemusnahan di syarikat syarikat milik kerajaan (GLCs) dengan memilih mereka yang telah mengampu beliau didalam kerajaan untuk menerajui GLC sebagai ganjaran sewaktu pencen walau rekod mereka lemah atau tiada kaitan langsung dengan syarikat syarikat gergasi yang dahulunya diterajui oleh golongan professional dan menguntungkan !

Apa agenda Tun Dr Mahathir sebenarnya sekarang ? –Din Merican

oleh Harakah Daily

4hb. Jun 2003

KUALA LUMPUR: Setelah menang pilihanraya umum ke 13 walaupun tewas undi popular buat pertama kalinya dalam sejarah, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad mendedahkan wajah UMNO yang sebenar kepada umum.

(Kata Mahathir, orang Melayu sudah meluat dengan UMNO… tetapi hanya sebut selepas pilihan raya selesai)

Bagi Mahathir, ramai orang Melayu sudah merasa meluat dengan UMNO dan mengganggapnya tidak relevan dan perlu ditolak kerana parti itu tidak lagi berjuang untuk bangsa, agama dan tanahair.

“UMNO ternampak dan memang pun benar, berjuang untuk kepentingan orang-orang tertentu dalamnya dan ahlinya sahaja. UMNO berjuang untuk jawatan dan pangkat, untuk memperkayakan diri, untuk sagu hati, untuk poket sendiri,” tulis Mahathir di blognya.

Mahathir berkata pemimpin UMNO kini melariskan budaya memilih orang kurang berkobolehan untuk menyertai parti supaya kedudukan mereka tidak diancam sampai bila-bila.

“Untuk ini mereka berusaha mengurangkan kemungkinan diri mereka dicabar, kurangkan kemungkinan diganti oleh sesiapa yang lebih layak. UMNO adalah hak ahlinya, hak pemimpinnya yang sedia ada dan bukan hak orang Melayu. Setelah mereka mendapat tempat jangan benar orang Melayu lain, terutama yang memiliki kebolehan tertentu, menyertai Umno,” selar beliau.

Sekarang, Mahathir berkata UMNO sudah menjadi sebuah parti hanya untuk pemimpin dan ahli semasa, dari ketua cawangan kepada ketua bahagian.

“UMNO tidak perlu tambahan ahli, tidak perlu penyertaan sesiapa lagi kerana ahli yang sedia ada perlu memelihara habuan mereka. Jika terlalu banyak ahli, habuan perlu dikongsi. Dan habuan yang dikongsi tentulah tidak sebanyak sebelum berkongsi,” sindirnya lagi.

Akibatnya, kata Mahathir, mereka terutama yang berkebolehan, yang berbakat tidak dibenar masuk UMMO lagi.

“Yang boleh menyertai hanyalah yang kurang berkebolehan dibanding dengan yang sudah ada. Oleh kerana penyertaan dalam UMNO mestilah melalui cawangan, yang boleh masuk UMNO ialah yang kurang berkebolehan dari ketua cawangan,” katanya.

Mahathir juga menyindir bahawa pemimpin-pemimpin UMNO ini sering terlupa ajal boleh sampai bila-bila masa.

“Ketua cawangan manusia biasa yang boleh diserang penyakit, bahkan boleh mati pun. Satu hari ketua cawangan terpaksa lepaskan jawatannya. Penggantinya tentulah orang yang memiliki kebolehan yang kurang darinya. Dengan itu kebolehan ketua cawangan akan merosot sepanjang masa, tiap kali pengganti mengambil alih. Dan ini akan terjadi dalam keseluruhan parti,” katanya.

Akhirnya, Mahathir berkata UMNO hanya tinggal golongan yang tidak berbakat sehingga semakin kurang ahli yang berbakat dan layak untuk menjadi calon dalam PRU.

“Calon payung terjun yang berbakat akan dikalahkan. Dengan itu pemimpin Kerajaan juga akan terdiri dari yang tidak berkebolehan,” sindirnya lagi.

“Di mana pergi mereka yang berbakat ini?. Mereka pergi ke mana mereka di terima, tentunya parti lawan,” tambahnya lagi.

PERINGATAN: Komentar yang diutarakan melalui laman sosial ini adalah milik peribadi akaun laman sosial ini. Segala risiko akibat komentar yang disiarkan TIDAK menjadi tanggungjawab Harakahdaily. Komentar yang disiarkan menjadi tanggungjawab pemilik akaun sendiri. Para komentar dinasihatkan bertanggungjawab dalam menulis dan elakkan komentar melampau dan berbaur perkauman.

Winner of seats, not votes

May 15, 2013

by Azmi Sharom@http://www.thestar.com.my

WHEN criticising laws and policies in this country, one of the stock answers that one is faced with is that the majority voted for the government in power, therefore, they are obviously happy with those said laws and policies. The majority rules after all.

Since 1969 Malaysia has a government whom the majority of voters did not choose.

I’d like to see anyone try that line of argument with me now. Not since 1969 has Malaysia had a government whom the majority of voters did not choose.

The popular vote in the 13th general election had 47% voting for Ba­risan Nasional, 51% for Pakatan Rak­yat and the remainder to Indepen­dents. The difference in numerical terms shows Pakatan with almost 390,000 more votes than Barisan.

These numbers are almost the mirror image of figures during the 12th General Election when BN won, so theoretically it should now be Pa­k­atan’s turn to govern.

Yet in GE-13, Barisan lost only se­v­en seats (my calculations are based on results of the 2008 elections before the frog-like behaviour of a handful of MPs) and are thus still holding the majority of seats in Parliament.

This is a weird situation of course and one that a teacher would be h­a­r­d pressed to explain to a class of nine-year-olds. Odd as it is, this is a possible outcome when one uses the first past the post system. However, such abnormalities are usually found in political systems where there are more than two political parties or coalitions.

In those situations the possibility of votes being split are more numerous thus leading to the possibility of a government with less than 50% of the popular votes but more seats in the legislature.

In our situation, because by and large there are only two major players (the Independents and smaller parties had a minimal impact in terms of vote splitting), the popular vote should reflect the number of seats in Parliament. Yet it did not.

So the question here is how can the system that we use (one used all over the world) lead to what on the face of it is an unfair result.

The answer is that although in the first past the post system the risk of a party having a majority of seats with a minority of popular votes is always there, the way to avoid such absurdities is to ensure that all the constituencies are appro­ximately t­h­­e sa­me size in terms of voter numbers. This is obviously not the case in Malaysia.

The discrepancies of voter numbers can be huge; this is particularly so when comparing the rural and urban areas with the latter having far more registered voters (although this is not necessarily the case all the time; urban Putrajaya is tiny in terms of voter numbers).

Naturally, rural areas are more sparsely populated than urban areas and therefore a certain degree of flexibility is required when delineating constituency lines. Rural areas will by sheer demographic and geographic realities have fewer voters in them.

However, the difference must not be ridiculously high. The general guideline is that a discrepancy must not be more than 15% and thus when drawing the boundaries of the constituencies, this factor ought to be considered.

This is clearly not the case. To give you an idea as to how big the discrepancies can get; the difference between Kapar (144,159 voters) and Putrajaya (15,791 voters) is just over 900%.

In effect, in the smaller constituencies, a person’s vote carries more weight than in the larger ones and it is no coincidence that the ruling coalition finds its support largely in small constituencies. This is not a satisfactory situation but it is one that can be fixed because the moment has come for a re-delineation exercise in this country. What perfect timing.

The Election Commission (EC) is charged with the exercise although the final acceptance of their recommendations lies in the hands of parliament (and the state legislatures in the case of state seats).

Why is it so difficult for the EC to do the right thing?

This is an opportunity for the EC to do the right thing and make good recommendations. They must if they are to recover any shred of dignity following their performance in the GE13. The fiasco with the so-called indelible ink is one example of how poorly handled things were.

The fact that the ink can be was­hed off (due to the “diluted” version used) has been attributed to the non-shaking of bottles (yes, seriously); Islamic teaching (although in India and Pakistan there appears to be no complaints about using the ink from the hundreds of millions of M­u­s­lims there); in the interest of health, apparently the ink can mess up your kidneys or give you cancer or something equally horrible (which is jolly thoughtful of the EC, but perhaps a tad paranoid and over-protective).

It was ludicrous to say that it does not matter if the ink is washable because you can only vote once with your identity card. What if someone has phantom like tendencies and has more than one identity card?

Which leads us to the EC’s terribly blasé treatment of genuine fears that phan­tom voters existed; another e­x­am­ple of them behaving in a manner that does not engender public confidence.

I am unsure if the EC will redraw the constituency boundaries in a fai­rer manner, and I am even more un­s­ure if the ruling party will accept any­thing that in their minds will be a disadvantage to their grasp on power.

What I am sure about is this country runs the risk of being a joke if something is not done to fix this. Unfortunately, it w­o­n’t be a funny joke and there is the probability of an un-amused and furious populace.

Democratic practices done properly are what ensure peace, not façade democracies which do not ultimately respect the peoples’ choice. When will those with the responsibility and the power stop t­h­i­n­king in petty terms and realise this? When will they show that they truly care about the nation?

The 2013 Election Results: Back to the Drawing Board for Both Coalitions

May 10, 2013

The 2013 Election Results: Back to the Drawing Board for both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat

by Dr. Lim Teck Ghee

Finally the general election is over. For politicians and analysts, the work of number crunching, deciphering the results and trying to understand the choices made by voters is just beginning.

Some conclusions are easy to arrive at. Firstly, despite a skewed electoral playing ground and the rolling out of more than RM2.6 billion worth of financial and other incentives to voters, the BN could not improve on its 2008 performance. Although it regained power in one state and has a comfortable majority at parliamentary level, its share of state and parliamentary seats has been substantially reduced. Had a fair election prevailed, it would have been consigned to the opposition benches. In fact BN lost the popular vote count by a substantial margin nation-wide. In most if not all electoral systems found in the world, it would have been booted out of office. In our case, it came dangerously close to it.

Barisan National: Still in Denial Mode

Najib blamed the Chinese tsunami for the BN’s lack luster performance. This was a knee jerk overreaction to the strong Chinese voter support given to the DAP and his disappointment with it. It can also be read as an attempt to tap into Malay public sympathy ahead of the backlash expected from UMNO conservative forces anticipated to come together to demand his resignation for failing to deliver the highly publicised target of a two thirds majority for UMNO and the BN.

Other commentators including UMNO ones have noted that the UMNO and BN results point to rejection not just from Chinese but also from large segments of other voters, including Malays.

Efforts had been made by Najib to woo just about every racial segment of the population. In particular the Malay dominated rural, civil service and police and military constituencies were targeted with perks and handouts timed for the election. For several months leading up to voting day, government and Malay media had also given prominence to Dr. Mahathir and other conservative Malay leaders playing up Malay and Muslim insecurities and emphasizing the importance of preserving Malay and Islamic dominance. Their objective was aimed clearly at bringing about the eclipse if not decimation of Dr. Mahathir’s nemesis, Anwar Ibrahim’s PKR and its multi-ethnic agenda of change, equality and reform.

That these failed to work was mainly due to demographic, occupation and spatial changes in the Malay population and widespread disapproval of the BN’s record of corruption, cronyism, and bad governance. Attempts to stampede the majority Malays into rejecting the opposition through raising racial and religious sentiments were only partially successful with young, better educated and urbanized Malays joining their non-Malay counterparts in opting for change – even if it was for a relatively untried, little tested and potentially unstable new coalition.

It is telling that despite a massive media campaign touting the stability of the BN and demonizing the divisions of the opposition, the electorate in the urbanized states of Selangor, Penang and other urban areas preferred to vote for the deep blue sea rather than the familiar.

In the end, the tsunami was not a Chinese one but a Malaysian urban and middle class one with voters who were better informed considerably less influenced by the government and BN friendly mass media and less susceptible to subtle threats and not so subtle incentives, and opting to cast their vote against the BN.

Pakatan’s Dilemma

For the Opposition, although they had their best result ever in winning the overall popular vote both at federal and state level and in making some inroads into formerly unassailable Barisan strongholds, Putrajaya was too far a reach this time.

Predictably, and with justification, PR has blamed electoral fraud and irregularities as the main reason for their failure to win power. Anwar Ibrahim, the PR leader has refused to accept the election results especially in closely contested constituencies and announced that a special investigative team from the three opposition parties will work with electoral reform group Bersih to gather information and proof that the election was neither free nor fair.

Even if proof of election fraud and irregularities is produced, there is no way the opposition or any other force can persuade the Election Commission to overturn the outcome of the election or order new elections. PR needs to reconcile itself to the fact that it went into the elections knowing and accepting of the obstacles the ruling party would deploy to stymie the opposition including possibly seeking to deny the handing over of power even if it was won fairly and squarely by the PR.

For PR to keep complaining about the way the election was stolen provides BN the justification to label them losers intent on inciting an Arab style spring mass revolt and bent on seizing power illegally. Better for them to take the high ground by accepting the outcome; and leave civil society groups to raise doubts about the legitimacy of the election results and to provide the evidence that can help pave the way to genuinely free and fair elections the next time round.

While the excoriation of the Electoral Commission and BN will not get the PR far in reversing the election results, critical analysis of their own shortcomings that have prevented Pakatan from securing a greater measure of popular support will be more useful in helping the opposition establish a basis for an overwhelming victory five years from now. The concern that the PR offers a potentially fragile replacement government and is badly divided on the key issue of Islam’s role in the country’s socio-political system remains in many minds – even amongst staunch PR supporters – and needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

The three parties comprising PR will also need to demonstrate that they have an inclusive political vision which can garner a larger measure of political support from Sabah and Sarawak’s natives. An important reason why BN has retained power has been the failure of the Peninsula tsunami to be replicated in East Malaysia in 2008 and now again in 2013.

Malaysia’s Growing Political Maturity

What should both sides –BN and PR – take away from the elections? Firstly, the limited success of the vote buying and racial chauvinism inciting campaign should lead both coalitions to rethink their post election strategies and policies. The present and next generation of voters will be even more predominantly urban dwellers, better educated and politically informed. They will be less easily fooled by political rhetoric or bought over by handouts and promises of rewards – the latter is already viewed by many as akin to bribes which have an effect opposite to that intended.

Besides desiring fair and good governance, Malaysians crave for moderate and accommodative policies and will reject politicians and parties espousing racial and religious extremism. The clock may have been turned back by the irresponsible post election race baiting engaged in by Utusan Malaysia and Dr. Mahathir. But it cannot be turned back on the country’s growing political maturity and the changes for the better that this will bring.

This is what the Chinese want

May 8, 2013

by Ong Hean Teik

The Utusan Malaysia headline of May 7 posed an interesting and pertinent question of what more do the Chinese in Malaysia want. It is a pity that Utusan is unable to see that what the Chinese want is, in fact, what the educated urban Malaysian voter wants, regardless of race or religion. There are three important characteristics lacking in the Barisan of today.

Any other mainstream media writing what has been written by Utusan Malaysia would have lost their licence to publish a long time ago.

Intelligent, courageous leadership

The Chinese comprise only 30 per cent of Malaysian voters, yet Pakatan Rakyat won 51 per cent of the total votes cast. By saying that the election result was because of the Chinese voters, the Barisan Nasional leadership demonstrates an inability to objectively face reality.

Barisan’s acceptance of Zulkifli Nordin as its direct Shah Alam candidate similarly shows a lack of intelligence and courage. Here is a lawyer who does not feel that dialogue and discussion can resolve matters, having forcefully disrupted a Law Society seminar a few years ago. He has vowed loyalty to, and then turned on, his previous political parties (PAS and PKR). He has publicly belittled an ancient religion with a million Malaysian followers.

UMNO making way for Ibrahim Ali to contest the Pasir Mas constituency is similarly bad judgement, showing its acceptance and approval of a crude man who prides himself with using vulgar words in public interviews.

Principled means acting in accordance with morality and showing recognition of right and wrong.

To give them such special honour and credit shows a lack of intelligent reasoning and an inability to stand up against the loud extremist faction of the party.

Attributing the election outcome to a “Chinese tsunami” is illogical in the face of concrete facts and data. PAS won an additional seven state seats in Selangor, all in Malay majority areas.

Lim Kit Siang could not have achieved a majority of over 14,000 votes in Gelang Patah without good support from Malays who form 35 per cent of the electorate there.

Similarly the UMNO-backed PERKASA extremists were conclusively rejected in Pasir Mas (96 per cent Malay) and in Shah Alam where Malays make up 70 per cent of the electorate.

To blindly spin the 2013 election outcome to suit its raced-based founding philosophy of 1947shows up a political party that wants to be stubbornly unwise. Unless UMNO’s leadership can find the courage to face facts, the party may become redundant and obsolete for the educated 21st century voter.

Respect for and recognition of rights

Academic studies have consistently shown that increased income brings more happiness and satisfaction only up to a certain point. When a society progresses out of poverty into middle class, increasing income does not increase satisfaction proportionately. It is the psychological aspects of living that produces a better quality of life.

Whatever the radiation scientists claim, the people of Bentong (45 per cent Malay, 44 per cent Chinese) will ask why a factory run by an Australian company is unsuitable for Australia or Damansara Heights but can be located in their backyard.

In 2008, Health Minister Liow won Bentong by over 12,000 votes. This year he retained Bentong with less than 400 votes against a political novice who is a green activist. The urban electorate, Chinese or Malay, seeks respect and recognition of their right to a safe living environment.

MCA contested in 37 parliamentary seats and managed to win seven in GE13.

In Penang, the 1 Malaysia Charity organisation hosted numerous concerts and dinners in support of Barisan candidates. At their functions, T-shirts, beer, hawker food and lucky draw gifts were given free.

Initially there was merriment and wonder at this new campaigning style; this then became anger and disgust when even cash incentives were handed out. The electorate felt they were treated with disrespect, as if their rights, dignity and vote were up for sale.

Numerous development issues had plagued the Penang DAP government in the months leading up to the election, and the increased majority they subsequently obtained can only be explained by the strong rejection what the other side represents. Money cannot buy happiness, and similarly, the urban electorate set out to show that money cannot buy their vote in Penang.

The urban electorate in Malaysia is obviously better off economically compared to the rural dwellers. They have reached a stage when extra economic incentives can no longer easily win their approval.

Instead they asked for respect, and an acknowledgement of their right to an inclusive, peaceful existence in the country. They seek recognition as a legitimate electorate with the right to choose the governing party. Blaming and insulting them for voting against the Barisan will only guarantee the DAP and Pakatan a brighter future.

Competent and efficient institutions

There is no doubt that relative to those who were once our equivalent, we Malaysians have fallen behind. The Singapore dollar which was equivalent to the ringgit in the 1970’s is today 2.5 times higher. Malaysia beat South Korea and Japan in the 1972 Olympic football qualifying rounds; today we are nowhere near these 2 World Cup Finals participating countries.

Malaysians have fallen behind in economy, education and sports.

Universiti Malaya had topped the list of universities passing the United States medical qualifying examination in 1969, ahead of Melbourne and Singapore University. In 2011, Universiti Malaya was ranked 401 out of the 500 universities in the Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities.

The educated, smart-phone holding, internet-surfing, urban voter is aware of world-wide trends and wants to experience the best that life can offer. When the governing party is unable to develop the country to its full potential, its popularity will drop.

As demonstrated by the Noble prize winning Dr Ivan Pavlov, animals respond to incentives, and man is no exception. A system that promotes those who agree with and pamper those in power while sidelining those working hard to pursue competency will breed inefficient malfunctioning institutions. Even those not under their direct employment will be affected by these incompetent institutions.

Malaysians want a competent and efficient institutions.

When the police force is politicised and crime rate increases, more money will have to be spent on personal and household security. Even Datuk Nazir Razak admitted that he had hesitated coming back to Malaysia because of concerns about his children’s education. When the middle class spends on private education or healthcare, votes for the governing party will drop.

Conclusion

The Chinese now make up only 25 per cent of Malaysia’s population and to be named as the cause of major developments in the country is to be hurtful to this minority and insulting to the majority. On the other hand, government statistics show that Malaysia’s urban population has increased from 62 per cent in 2000 to 71 per cent in 2010.

No amount of rhetorical whitewashing can hide the fact that the poor performance of Barisan in the 2013 election is due to its failure to win the heart and mind of the urban voter. The faster it faces reality and move away from its obsolete race-based mindset, the better its prospects for the next electoral battle.

* Dr Ong Hean Teik is a consultant cardiologist in Penang. He reads The Malaysian Insider.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT EVERY SINGLE RECOUNT RESULTS IN BN GETTING A HIGHER VOTE COUNT?

May 7, 2013

 HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT EVERY SINGLE RECOUNT RESULTS IN BN GETTING A HIGHER VOTE COUNT?

by Jason Lim

This election is so freaking confusing and non-transparent. I can’t find impartial information anywhere, even if I were trying to just find the facts. How come the Counting Agents are silent? Why are numbers different depending on the sources I visit? I decided to form my own conclusions and pulled the entire result list from the SPR website and collated them, in the sincere hope that SPR is as factual as it gets. Several observations have me rather irked, and I hope all of you, my friends, as thinking, rational people consider these facts.

i) EC said voter turnout was around 80%, among the highest, if not the highest in the world. My spreadsheet has it at 84.6%. Every time I hear something like “Highest in the world” I get really suspicious. However, there being no compulsory registration, I will take this with a pinch of salt.

ii) The balance of power is hanging on a very thin edge, and it is vexing to think that it is POSSIBLE that a small sleight of hand can shift the balance. Let me give an example: There were 25 parliamentary seats that PR lost on a margin of less than 2000 votes. The actual number is 26,916 votes across 25 seats. This means if only 2,931 people( less than half a % of registered voters) voted for the Opposition, PR would be in power now. For those who don’t believe me I encourage you to do your homework, the seats are: 003,012,018,026,029,053,058,067,078,089,092,093,096, 118,119,140,142,144,146,158,159,168,177,182,220

iii) By my calculation, for parliamentary votes BN has 47.4%, PR 50.9%, Others 1.7%

Why do my numbers seem different as compared to various sources? I’m not saying anything about gerrymandering if that’s what you’re thinking, but I do question the transparency of information. The entire rakyat should be able to scrutinize the process and be able to access the information readily. SPR gives me the behind-closed-doors white smoke from the chimney kind of feeling.

iv) Why do all the recounts seem to favour a certain party? As I do not have first hand information(read: say something counting agents), I will not speculate on this one.

It’s just sad that the ruling coalition cannot attempt to reassure the public that the results are fair and transparent by a very simple SHOW AND TELL, yet they choose SMOKE AND MIRRORS. I choose to view internet news as biased and sentimentalist, but seriously, all the public is looking for is the truth. I mean, why cover up and secretly deliver ballot boxes if they belong to a particular centre? Just show it and deliver it with your head held high!

Despite being well prepared with generators in case of power failure, this still existed during re-counting of ballot papers.

I don’t like the POSSIBILITY that the democratic process in Malaysia was hijacked.

The reason the same thing didn’t happen with Lembah Pantai is the efforts of Bangsarians to prevent fake ballot bags to get through.

For those interested in the full spreadsheet you can download it with macros removed:

Doc1

State data now available: Doc 2

 

Jason Lim*

*The author is a graduate student at the University of Melbourne, Australia

GE-13: Online Media provides the most even-handed coverage

April 24, 2013

by http://www.malaysiakini.com

The online media provides the most even-handed coverage of the elections in the first week after the parliament was dissolved, according to a study. It gave BN only slightly more coverage than Pakatan Rakyat parties, and also uses the neutral tone most frequently.

When the coverage are categorised as either positive, neutral, negative, or attacking in tone, both BN and Pakatan Rakyat received roughly equal amounts of each of the for types of coverage, except that Pakatan Rakyat had slightly more of the neutral articles.

“They are the most even-handed in their coverage of political parties and coalitions of the four media types analysed,” says the preliminary report of the study jointly conducted by the University of Nottingham and the media watchdog NGO, Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ).

Of the 26 media outlets analysed in their ‘Watching the Watchdog’ study, only two are from the online press, namely Malaysiakini and The Malaysian Insider.

The other media categories being monitored are newspapers, television, and national news agency Bernama, but does not offer a breakdown of the performance of each media outlet.

Taken as a whole however, the overall trend is still to give BN the most coverage, as well as the most favourable coverage.  This would deprive citizens of fair and objective information about the political parties taking part in the election, the report says.

“Newspapers and television news heavily favour BN in terms of both the quantity and quality of coverage devoted to the coalition and its parties,

“The only news sources which do not conform to the above trends are the online news portals, which give approximately equal quantities and quality of coverage to both BN and Pakatan Rakyat,” it said.

The report also found that newspapers also carry the much of the political coverage to both praise and to attack BN.

Diversity of the 16 media outlets

This is likely due to the diversity of the 16 media outlets included in the category, including among others, New Straits Times and theSun for the English press, Utusan Malaysia and Sinar Harian in the Malay press, Sin Chew Daily and Oriental Daily in the Chinese press, and Makkal Osai in the Tamil press.

As for Bernama, which is under the Information Ministry, 62 percent of its political coverage is for BN. Of all its positive report, 91 percent benefit BN, whereas Pakatan Rakyat received most of its negative reports.

The study was conducted between April 7, which is four days after the parliament dissolved, until April 15, which is five days before nomination day.

The study will continue to run until May 7, which is two days after polling day.

Three Penang BN leaders declare war on coalition

April 17, 2013

by Susan Loone@http://www.malaysiakini.com

With nominations to be filed on Saturday, Penang BN is allegedly in a state of panic over intense factionalism and internal sabotage especially in the UMNO and Gerakan camps.

The situation does not bode well for the BN, which hopes to rely on the Malay rural and mixed seats – where candidates from the two parties are to contest – to deliver the votes against Pakatan Rakyat.

Last night, three veteran leaders publicly declared war on the BN after finding out that their names were not on the candidacy list unveiled yesterday.

The trio are Gerakan’s Batu Uban coordinator A Mohan and two senior Umno leaders – former Tasek Gelugor MP Shariff Omar (above) and Sungai Dua incumbent Jasmin Mohammed.

Mohan and Shariff have since decided to run as parliamentary candidates in Batu Kawan and Tasek Gelugor respectively, warning of a three-corner fight in each constituency.

Mohan said he also plans to contest a state seat on a Parti Kesejahteraan Insan (Kita) ticket.Shariff said he would run as a “Pakatan Rakyat-friendly Independent”, but would not say which party logo he intends to use.Both will reveal their decisions on Saturday.

Jasmin (far right in photo), who is Shariff’s protege, urged the leaders responsible for putting together the candidacy list to review the matter immediately or face “the people’s wrath”.

BN state chief Teng Chang Yeow and Penang UMNO head Zainal Abidin Osman have been named as those responsible for the “candidacy mess”.

They have been accused of “cronyism” by putting up those loyal to them while sidelining others or dismissing the people’s choice of candidates.

BN head Najib Abdul Razak was not spared either, with the dissidents questioning his touted slogan of ‘People first’ and ‘Janji ditepati’ (Promises fulfilled).

“It seems to be practised backwards as cronies are given first choice while the people’s wishes come last,” Shariff told a 2,000-strong crowd at a ceramah in Tasek Gelugor last night.

As to Teng’s warning that saboteurs will be summarily expelled from their party, Shariff responded fiercely: “Go ahead, do it now. Don’t try to threaten us, don’t wait until tomorrow, it is not as if I will be hanged to death.”

“Do not think these seats are still safe. They are taking a big risk by doing this (by not fielding us).”

The ceramah audience, comprising a large group of Wanita UMNO members, gave a resounding ‘Yes’ to casting their votes for Shariff on May 5.

 “Their presence here is clear, so where did the leaders (Penang UMNO) get the information from – that we are not winnable candidates?” Shariff posed at a press conference afterwards.

“They did this behind our backs and thought we would not find out, but we have many who are sympathetic to us and who have told us of their plans.

“They tried to control me, they called me even when I was in New York to ask me not to do anything. But it is not about me but the people’s decision.”

Two of Shariff’s loyalists threatened to contest as Independents in Sungai Dua and Telok Ayer Tawar – two seats under Tasik Gelugor – should their preferred candidates failed to be fielded.

Mohan quits Gerakan

Mohan has terminated 30 years of Gerakan membership, while a group of about 50 supporters held a peaceful rally to appeal his candidacy in front of his service centre in Taman Kasawari, Simpang Ampat last night.

Mohan cut his membership card in front of reporters, while his supporters brought down the party’s flags and gave a thumbs down to the BN’s symbol, the dacing.

He vowed to close down his Taman Sembilang branch, taking along with him 192 members.

“I was promised the post last month by state BN secretary Omar Fauza. I was told to work harder and I did, day and night,” he said.

“My family and I sacrificed for BN but we are not appreciated. Teng did not even say thanks or sorry to me for what has happened.”

Mohan said the Gerakan candidate N Gobalakrishnan is an unknown who has never even “threw a stone” in the area.

“Gobalakrishnan was given the seat only last week. Everyone wants to come to Batu Kawan. No one wants to work here, but I did, so why didn’t they field me?”

If he contests in the seat, there will be a four-corner fight with Gobalakrishnan, Parti Cinta Malaysia’s Huan Cheng Guan and a DAP candidate.

It is learnt that three more hopefuls – Seberang Jaya incumbent Ariff Shah Omar Shah, BN coordinators Ooi Suan Hoe (Machang Bubok) and Jackson Teoh (Ayer Itam ) – may also express dissatisfaction.

Ooi and Teoh have been moved aside to make way for Teng’s assistants – Lo Jia Sheng and Tan Lok Seah – in the two seats. Bayan Baru UMNO chief Abdul Rahim Saibu is another leader to watch as he was not fielded in Batu Maung, despite the various welfare programmes he has initiated in the area.

Former assemblyperson Mansor Musa will now contest there against PKR’s incumbent Abdul Malik Kassim.

Vote to end the Era of Mahathirism

April 9, 2013

GE-13: End the Era of Mahathirism?

by Dr Neil Khor@http://www.malaysiakini.com

COMMENT: Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died yesterday. Within minutes, Facebook and Twitter were buzzing. Almost everyone old enough to remember her when she was PM said in unison that her death was “the end of an era”.

Those who know of her only from the recent Academy Award-winning film based upon her life have also huddled irrationally together “to express their sympathy” for someone they have never met or even heard of until very recently.

This phenomenon of missing someone whom we do not know personally is a by-product of the influence of the mass media on our lives. Social networking has made this effect more pervasive, creating group identities.

This new situation means that leaders have to be celebrities to win elections.That was why Najib Abdul Razak asked Malaysians whether we trusted him or Anwar. He was addressing young voters, who will decide if BN claws back its two-thirds majority.

The politician as celebrity started with Thatcher, one of the world’s most ‘constructed’ leaders. Her global image was as coiffured as her hair. Nothing was left to chance and there was no time to spare in her sprint to transform herself into a celebrity prime minister. The first woman British PM, she led the way with Barack Obama as her media savvy heir.

Thatcher did not have many admirers but she had many imitators. Imitation, as the British know so well, is the best form of flattery. In Malaysia, she wrote in her autobiography, “there was a man who said ‘buy British Last’, I let him host CHOGM and he never turned back”. No other Third World Leader learnt his lesson better than Malaysia’s Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Today, Mahathir is seen as the BN’s last great hope. He is campaigning for BN because he feels indebted to BN for all the years it has supported him.

Unlike so many other ingrates, Mahathir knows how to repay his debts. There is little doubt in the minds of most Malaysians that he continues to pull the levers in the BN. He can decide when a BN prime minister should step down and whom to elevate.

Mahathir modeled himself on the world leaders of his generation. This did not include nationalist leaders of the Third World but the ‘strong’ leaders of the West. Thatcher was one of them.

There is very little in the public domain about their relationship except for a little-known book about the Pergau Dam project. In it, the man who promoted ‘Buy British Last’, was actively courting British arms manufacturers.

‘All the world’s a stage and we merely players’, especially so when Mahathir launched the very public anti-British campaign while in private, British commercial interests proliferated.

Malaysia and Singapore remain the West’s strongest allies in Southeast Asia. Mahathir’s adroit handling of his public persona as the ‘voice of the Third World’ and his masterful facilitation of Western interests have ensured ‘peace’ for Malaysia.

Thatcher may have dismantled industrial Britain but Mahathir used FDI from the West to industrialise Malaysia. The reality is that Malaysia has remained ‘safe’ and secular under BN and especially during Mahathir’s long administration.

He successfully kept the Islamists at bay. This is the “devil you know”, so do you really want to take risks?

Mahathir’s immense influence

As we await the countdown to GE13, many of the older generation will be looking back nostalgically to the time when we had a strong leader.There was nothing silly that came out from the mouth of the PM like “the era of government knows best is over”. There were no direct handouts, no need to massage the inflation figures and no ambiguity about the national vision.

There were no ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ when implementing policy. If the press was pesky, we simply closed down the papers. If the royals went too far, we removed their immunity from prosecution. When the judiciary began to veer off course, we removed the Lord President.

And the PM led the BN to five electoral victory never losing its two-thirds majority because so many Malaysians voted for them. The PM was never more popular than the party.

Whilst both Thatcher and Mahathir rose above all their contemporaries to emerge as ‘strong’ leaders by mastering the media and cultivating an image as ‘conviction politicians’, enter the Internet and the rise of social media.

In the case of Mahathir, the social media was the tool he used to get his message across. He unseated his hand-picked successor by systematically demolishing Abdullah Ahmad Badawi , who will be forever remembered as the “sleeping PM”.

Today, Mahathir is once again using his immense influence over the electorate to make sure the BN wins big in the coming GE. He said very clearly that the BN formula is the only one that works because Malaysians will never be mature enough to see beyond their own race and religion.

He celebrates Ibrahim Ali and PERKASA as custodians of the special Malaysian formula of ‘Malay leadership’ of a diverse multi-ethnic nation. He has made it clear that Selangor needs to be saved from another term of Pakatan Rakyat rule.

Some call this fear-mongering but it is a great pincer strategy. Whilst Najib is free to portray himself as cosmopolitan and a strong proponent of 1Malaysia, Mahathir appeals to the baser instincts of Malaysians at the lower end of the economic ladder.

Preying on their insecurities and the basic instinct to survive, he is indeed paying BN back for all the years the coalition has been of service to him. It was, after all the MCA and Gerakan, that saved him when UMNO was declared illegal in 1988 and when the Malays abandoned UMNO in 1999.

By supporting Perkasa and Ibrahim (left in photo), Mahathir has set the stage for the ultimate triumph of his worldview and his formula for Malaysia. Tunku Abdul Rahman recognised this cynical view and rejected Mahathir, dying outside of UMNO and the coalition he fled.

The same with Hussein Onn, who preferred to join Semangat 46 that was led by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah. When Najib fails to obtain the two-thirds majority that he so confidently thinks he can get, Mahathir will be there to tell us that Malaysians have rejected 1Malaysia.

So, to those who want to see Thatcher’s death as the end of an era – that is, the end of the era of divisive politics, of cynicism and of egomaniacal leaders – please think again.

It was the political philosopher Edmund Burke who said “those who have been intoxicated with power can never willingly abandon it”. So it is with Mahathir and his quest to ‘save’ Malaysia, the Malaysia created in his own image.

It is now up to us to go to the polls and decide for ourselves whether it is truly the end of the Mahathir era!

Politicians among 1,500 who own offshore companies

Politicians among 1,500 who own offshore companies – Malaysiakini

EXCLUSIVE: Top Malaysian politicians, their family members and well-heeled associates are among those owning secretive offshore companies in Singapore and the British Virgin Islands, according to an explosive cache of leaked documents.

They include former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s son Mirzan, Federal Territories and Urban Well-being Minister Raja Nong Chik Zainal Abidin and Michael Chia, the alleged ‘bagman’ for Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman.

The files, which were obtained by Washington-based International Confederation of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and examined by Malaysiakini,show more than 1,500 Malaysians owning offshore companies in Singapore – dubbed as the new Switzerland – as well as the British Virgin Islands (BVI), an international tax haven.

The ICIJ list comprises a curious mix of Forbes-listed tycoons, parliamentarians, retired politicians, civil servants and their spouses, members of royal families, famous and infamous businesspeople, underworld kingpins and even former beauty queens.

While some of the offshore companies carry out legitimate transactions, others are likely to be part of the RM871.4 billion estimated by Washington-based financial watchdog Global Financial Integrity (GFI) to have been lost through illicit outflows over a 10-year period.

In 2010 alone, GFI reported that close to RM200 billion of dirty money was siphoned out of Malaysia, putting the country second only to Asian economic powerhouse China in global capital flight.

The leaked ICIJ files provide secret records of offshore holdings of people and companies in more than 170 countries and territories.

“The hoard of documents represents the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organisation. The total size of the files, measured in gigabytes, is more than 160 times larger than the leak of US State Department documents by Wikileaks in 2010,” says ICIJ.

However, despite the extensive data, this is not the complete list of all off-shore companies around the world. Indeed, it is only the tip of the iceberg.

Nevertheless, it allows members of the public, for the very first time, to sneak a peak into the secretive world of anonymous wealth.

Raja Nong Chik

According to the leaked documents, Raja Nong Chik, who is Lembah Pantai UMNO chief, is a prominent shareholder and director of RZA International Corporation, a British Virgin Islands entity incorporated on Aug 21, 2007, through Singapore.

The company is a mirror of Malaysian entity Kumpulan RZA Sdn Bhd, a 1997-founded company dealing in real estate and equities investment.

Raja Nong Chik set up the offshore entity with his father, Raja Zainal Abidin Raja Tachik, a number of his sisters and brothers as well as other family members. Most of them are also shareholders and directors of Kumpulan RZA Sdn Bhd.

Prior to his senatorship, Raja Nong Chik was a corporate figure who founded and managed an engineering firm for 20 years.

Contacted by Malaysiakini, the minister confirmed that RZA International was set up by his father, who will turn 96 this year, “for the purpose of holding legitimate offshore investments for the family”.

However, the minister did not elaborate on the offshore investments made by his family through the company. He added that RZA International was de-registered in 2009.

“The company was not used to obscure activities of Kumpulan RZA Sdn Bhd, and neither was it used to circumvent taxes or hide transactions overseas,” Raja Nong Chik said in an email to Malaysiakini.

Mirzan Mahathir

Mirzan Mahathir, the eldest son of Mahathir, is also among those the ICIJ list as director and shareholder of three off-shore companies.

Mirzan’s major commercial vehicle in Malaysia is Crescent Capital Sdn Bhd, an investment holding and independent strategic and financial advisory firm. He is the company’s chairperson and chief executive officer.

A Forbes-listed entrepreneur, Mirzan holds a non-executive director position in Philippines-based San Miguel group, which has raised eyebrows in Muslim-majority Malaysia, as beer brewery is a core businesses of San Miguel.

One of Mirzan’s offshore entities is called Crescent Energy Ltd, a Labuan offshore company incorporated on Dec 16, 2003, originally named Mainline Ltd and with an authorised share capital of US$12,000 (RM37,000).

Mirzan became a director and main shareholder six days later and the company was renamed Crescent Energy on May 16, 2008.

Another Labuan offshore company, Utara Capital Ltd, in which Mirzan is named as sole shareholder and director, was incorporated on Aug 19, 1997, with an authorised share capital of US$15,000.

The third company, Al Sadd Investments Pte Ltd. was also a Labuan offshore company. It was established on May 14, 2009, with an authorised share capital of US$12,000. Mirzan is listed as the sole shareholder and director of Al Sadd Investments.

Malaysiakini has approached Mirzan’s office for his comments on these offshore companies, but his aide said he was unable to respond on the matter as he was out of town.

Michael Chia

Another prominent personality on the list is Chia Tien Foh, who is better known as Michael Chia – the shadowy business tycoon allegedly linked to Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman.

Chia, too, has three offshore companies in which he is listed as either as director or shareholder. One of them was CTF International Ltd , with ‘CTF’ seen as the initials of Chia’s full name. It was incorporated on April 18, 2007, in the British Virgin Islands.

CTF International gained notoriety when it was named by whistleblower website Sarawak Report of being a conduit in channelling millions of ringgit to a Hong Kong account allegedly linked to Musa.

However, Musa (left), has denied any business ties with Chia (right).

CTF was de-registered in 2008. The other two offshore companies owned by Chia are Ravenswood Development Ltd and Ark Capital Technologies Ltd.

In addition, Chia’s wife Yap Loo Mien and another woman, who is alleged to be his mistress, Yap Siaw Lin, also appear on the list as key shareholders in three separate British Virgin Islands entities.

Loo Mien owned two companies – Perfect Minds Incorporated and StarWater Corporation – while Siaw Lin owned Splendor Success Worldwide Ltd.

Malaysiakini contacted Chia through the address stated in his company registration documents for comments, but there has been no response.

Iron-clad secrecy

According to a former officer with of the Inland Revenue Board (IRB), crooked Malaysians parked their money offshore to enjoy either significantly lower or even no taxes, and where the income is illegal, they are protected by a wall of secrecy.

Such ploys, said the officer who was a tax investigator, may not always succeed as Malaysia has a double taxation agreement, with close to 80 countries, that provides for the exchange of information on investigations involving the prevention or detection of tax evasion or fraud.

This includes Singapore, where some of the offshore companies are based.

The island republic has been labelled by Sarawak corporate lawyer Alvin Chong (right) as the “new Switzerland” in a recent video clandestinely filmed by London-based NGO Global Witness.

The retired officer, who worked with the IRB for more than 20 years, added that while the setting up of offshore companies was, in itself not illegal, such companies could be used to evade taxes.

“For example, a payment can be made for a seemingly legitimate service, like consultancy for the procurement of submarines, but it is paid to a company set up overseas, where the recipient pays a lower tax.

“Singapore and Hong Kong, with corporate tax rates of about 17 percent compared with Malaysia’s 25 percent, are popular parking lots,” he said, speaking on condition he not be named.

Tax evasion

One of the methods of tax evasion was explained by Chong in the Global Witness video – on how to avoid paying capital gains tax relating to Sarawak’s doggy land deals.

According to the former tax officer, offshore companies often include many layers of ownership through nominees to camouflage and “water down the link” to the original owner.

As such, he said the act of setting up offshore companies in tax havens often raises red flags.

“Someone can say that their company is set up at the British Virgin Islands, for example, but the money they use to set up the BVI company, or more importantly, the operations channeled through these tax havens could raise suspicion as being not genuine and invite an IRB probe,” he said.

“If the MACC (Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission), IRB or the police want information from their Singapore counterparts, for example, the latter are obliged to give, at least under the Malaysia-Singapore DTA (double taxation agreement),” he said.

But most tax havens are not signatories to DTA agreements and they operate outside international law.

Moreover, it is also up to the Malaysian authorities to decide whether to pursue the case and seek the necessary information from their counterparts abroad.

---

Aidila Razak, Kuek Ser Kuang Keng, Wong Teck Chi and Steven Gan contributed to this report.

 

The Passing of My Journalist Friend, Zainon Ahmad. Al-Fatihah

March 27, 2013

Bernama

KOTA BARU, March 27 — The Sun Daily’s Consultant Editor Zainon Ahmad died due to liver cancer today. He was 70.

According to his daughter, Zuhailawati, Zainon died at 2.25pm at the Raja Perempuan Zainab II Hospital (HRPZII) here. She said her father was admitted to the hospital after complaining of chest pains at their house in Jalan Bayam here at 1am yesterday.

HRPZII director Datuk Dr Mohd Ghazali Hasni Mat Hassan confirmed Zainon died at the intensive care ward at 2.25pm.

Zuhailawati said her mother Hasnah Abdullah, 65, and two siblings were at his bedside when he died. According to Zuhailawati, her father’s body will be brought to their house in Jalan Bayam here before being laid to rest at the Banggol Muslim cemetery in Kota Baru tomorrow.

Zuhailawati said her father had contracted liver cancer for quite sometime and it began to get serious in October last year. She said before this, her father had been getting treatment at a private hospital in Subang Jaya, Selangor.

Zainon, who was a teacher for three years before joining journalism 35 years ago, was the Assistant Group Editor of The New Straits Times Group. He later joined The Sun as the Editor-in-Chief in 2002.

He was a regular speaker on the role of the media at local and international conferences and was active in various young journalist training programmes.

He was bestowed the Media Personality Award in 2010. Zainon held a degree in History and a Masters’ degree in International Relations from Universiti Malaya. He had also studied newspaper management at the Thomson Foundation, London and was a fellow of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tuft University, Boston in the US. — Bernama

THE BORDERS/IRSHAD MANJI BOOK CASE: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY PREVAILED!

March 22,2013

by Din Merican

I have become friends with Nik Raina Nik Abdul Aziz, the poor Malay Borders Bookstore

manager who, on  May 30, 2012, was charged with much fanfare in the Syariah Court for purportedly distributing anti-Islam books. The book in question was by a Canadian writer Irshad Manji titled “Allah Liberty and Love”.

That immediately made Nik Raina an enemy of Islam. In Malaysia, nobody wants to be an enemy of Islam. It did not matter that Nik had not read the book nor understood what it is about. It did not matter that she was a mere employee and had no control over the books sold in the Borders Bookstore. It did not matter that nobody knew that the book was against Islam. It did not matter that nobody knew about any ban on the book, because it was not banned at that time.

Once the Jabatan Agama, in this case Jabatan Agama Wilayah Persekutuan (JAWI), charged her in the Syariah Court, she became Islam’s No.1 Enemy. That was what happened to Nik Raina since May 2012 until this morning when I received the good news that Borders Bookstore, Stephen Fung and Nik Raina have been vindicated by High Court Judge Dato’ Zaleha Yusuf. News spread very fast that Judge Zaleha had chastised JAWI for displaying religious madness in their action against Borders, Stephen and Nik Raina.

Nik Raina and her lawyer, En. Rosli Dahlan

Immediately I was impressed because I have seen this judge. Dato’ Zaleha wears the tudung. This must be one brave Malay lady tudung Judge to vindicate the enemies of Islam in her court of law.

More than that, she dared to chastise JAWI and two Ministers namely the Home Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, and the Agama Minister, Jamil Khir Baharom for not correcting JAWI. But why was this judge so brave to vindicate people branded by JAWI as the enemies of Islam? And why vindicate? For what? What wrong have they done? So, let’s understand the facts a bit.

Apparently, some time before the incident, JAWI and Islamic scholars from JAKIM had reviewed the Irshad Manji book and prepared a thick report counting out 1001 reasons why Irshad Manji is an enemy of Islam and thus all her writings are blasphemous. If JAWI had their way they would burn Irshad Manji on the stake and make her books a bonfire.

Anyway, JAWI then approached the Minister of Home Affairs to ban the book because under the Printing and Presses Act, only the Home Minister can ban books. For some reason, the Home Minister slept on it like how he slept on the job when more than 100 Filipino terrorists took over Lahad Datu.

In Lahad Datu, the Home Minister justified the continued presence of these terrorists on Malaysian soil by saying that they are harmless toothless sarong clad old men, that is, until our security forces men were brutally killed and mutilated. In the end, we had to call on jet fighters and the army to bomb the three villages to get rid of these harmless toothless old men.

The inaction of Home minister Hishamuddin Hussein in this case is almost similar to his late action  to table a white paper on the Lahad Datu episode. It should have been done during the early stage of intrusion. The matter has prolonged long enough and many security personnel had lost their lives. The people had also waited too long for answers, but in the end they were disappointed as none had been forthcoming.

So, JAWI being irritated with the inaction by the Home Minister decided to take things into their own hands and orchestrated a dramatic raid on Borders Bookstore at the Gardens Mid Valley Mall. Just like the siege of Bahgdad when the Mongolian horde stormed a Muslim city, the JAWI commandos stormed Borders Bookstore with a horde of photographers and reporters as if it was a fortress of anti-Islam books. Like in a Jihad (Holy War), JAWI needed to capture some POWs (Prisoners of War), otherwise it would not be a successful war campaign.

But JAWI had a problem because Borders is owned by a company, Berjaya, and they dare not arrest the owners of Borders because that would be Tan Sri Vincent Tan. So they went after the General Manager who is Stephen Fung. Again, that was a problem because Stephen is a Christian and JAWI has no powers over non-Muslims. So, JAWI went down the chain of command and to their delight found that the store manager is a Muslim. So that’s how Nik Raina got embroiled.

But that was not the end of JAWI’s problem. After interviewing Nik Raina, JAWI discovered that Nik Raina had neither power over nor knowledge about the book. You see, at that time JAWI had not announced to the public of the findings of their thick report that the book is anti-Islam because that report was official secret meant only for the eyes of the Home Minister. And the Home Minister had forgotten to gazette a ban on the book as anti-Islam. So, on the day of the raid and Nik Raina’s arrest, nobody knew that the book was banned. But JAWI didn’t care. JAWI was in a rush to announce the success of their raid, so they needed to charge someone, anyone. JAWI refused to listen to reason and even refused legal representation to Nik Raina. So that’s why Nik Raina was charged, because it was convenient to do so.

But JAWI underestimated that Berjaya is now under a new leadership, Dato Robin Tan. Robin Tan may be Vincent Tan’s son, but he is a man of the brave new world and could not stand to see his company and his employees being bullied and kicked around. Also, Borders’ COO is a feisty Australian trained lawyer, Yau Su Peng. So, between them, they decided to look around for a lawyer who is qualified to appear in the Syariah Courts and the Civil Courts; who will not be cowed to appear against the bullying and intimidating tactics of the Ketua Pendakwa Syarie; a lawyer who is not afraid of the establishment. Enter my young friend, Lawyer Rosli Dahlan!

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

To give support to Nik Raina, my wife and I have attended the court sessions in the Syariah Courts and the Civil Courts. I have seen how committed and passionate Rosli is in defending Nik Raina. I have heard him articulating why JAWI’s action was misguided and the madness of JAWI and the Ketua Pendakwa Syarie in pursuing the matter. I have heard him imploring the Civil Courts not to be intimidated by the Syariah authorities and persuading them not to abdicate their constitutional duty.

Thus, I was most happy today that Judge Dato Zaleha was moved by Rosli’s closing Submissions that JAWI’s actions set a dangerous precedent that any state religious body can simply deem a publication to be contrary to hukum syarak without the public being aware of it. And that was what that had stirred controversy, created a conflict of laws situation and gave Malaysia unnecessary international acclaim for illogical religious enforcement action.

From my sources in Borders, I have obtained a copy of Rosli’s Submission in which he implored the Judge “to reinstate reason into this already tumultuous situation so that some sense and sensibility can prevail to calm our multi-racial and multi-religious Malaysian society which has been disturbed by an unwarranted fear stirred by JAWI and the lack of moral courage and political will by the Minister of KDN and Minister Agama to correct the obvious wrongs committed by JAWI.”

I salute Tudung Judge Dato’ Zaleha for her moral courage in making this bold Judgment. More than that, Malaysians now can have more confidence in the new Judiciary where Judges are not afraid to restore sense and sensibility which is much needed in our government’s administration!

_____________

DECISION FOR JUDICIAL REVIEW APPLICATION: KUALA LUMPUR HIGH COURT CIVIL NO. R2-25-137-06/2012

Brief Grounds by Yang Arif Dato’ Zaleha Binti Yusof on 22.02.2013, 9:37 a.m.:

“This is going to be the gist of my decision.

This case involves the review of the Respondents’ action in raiding and searching the premises of the 1st Applicant and seizing publication therein and examining the Applicants and subsequently arresting and prosecuting the 3rd Applicant.

The Respondents here are public authorities and the Applicants are aggrieved and have been already affected by the Respondents’ action. Hence, this Court is of the opinion that this Court has a supervisory jurisdiction over the decision and acts of these bodies. This application also involves the interpretation of law that relates to fundamental liberties thus it is clear to me that the Applicants are entitled to file this application under Order 53 of the Rules of Court and this Court has jurisdiction to hear it. To me the question of this Court encroaching into the jurisdiction of the Syariah Court does not arise as it is the Civil Court that has jurisdiction to review.

Well the actions of the Respondents affect the Applicants who are a company, a non-Muslim and a Muslim respectively. Section 1 subsection (2) of Syariah Offences Act clearly provides that the Act shall apply to persons professing the religion of Islam and corporation is not included in the definition of Muslim under the Syariah Administration Act.

As submitted by the learned counsel for the Applicants, the High Court in Potensi Bernas Sdn Bhd v. Datuk Badaruddin Datuk Mustapha had decided that Syariah Court has no jurisdiction over a non-muslim and that a company being a creature of the statute does not profess any religion. Similary in Latifah Mat Zin v. Rosmawati Sharibun & Anor, the Federal Court had held that an application to the Syariah Court can only be made if both parties are Muslim. Since the Syariah law is only applicable to Muslim therefore the actions taken by the 1st Respondent against the 1st and 2nd Applicants in my opinion were clearly illegal.

On action against the 3rd Applicant, no doubt she is a Muslim, however does that alone justify the 1st Respondent’s action against her? She is a merely a Store Manager and the person who is responsible for the collection of titles and range of stock of books and publications displayed and sold in the 1st Applicant’s Bookstore is the 2nd Applicant and not her, and this has not been disputed.

 Matters pertaining to publication, printing and printing presses fall within item 21, List I of the Ninth Schedule read together with Article 74 of the Federal Constitution. If we look at item 1 of List II of the Ninth Schedule, the State is given power to create and punish offences by persons professing the religion of Islam against precepts of Islam except in regards to matters included in the Federal List. No doubt the creation of punishment of offences against the precepts of Islam can be enacted by the State Legislature. However clear reading of Item 1 of List II of the Ninth Schedule as I mentioned just now shows that the State cannot enact laws in regards to matters included in the Federal List. Since matters pertaining to publication, printing and printing presses fall within List I ie. The Federal List, the validity of section 13 of the Syariah Offences Act is questionable as it is ultra vires the Printing Act and the Federal Constitution. Even if it is a valid law what amounts to contrary to Islamic Law is also questionable as it is too wide. Members of the public must be made known what publication is contrary to Islamic Law or precepts of Islam. Otherwise as the Learned Counsel for the Applicants have submitted, a Muslim employee who works in a bookstore that also sells Christianity Bible, books on Buddhism or Hinduism or any other religion besides other books which as we know now they are many such bookstore would be committing an offence. Hence there need to be notification by the Respondents as to what books and publication are contrary to Islamic Law.

It must be noted that at the material time the publications or books in question was not subject to any Prohibition Order by KDN. The Prosecution Order was only issued 3 weeks after the raid. Bear in mind the provision of Article 7 of Federal Constitution which provides that no person shall be punishable for an act or omission which was not punishable by law when it was done or made.

Section 13 of the Syariah Offences Act must be in conformity with the Federal Constitution especially the said Article 7. The Court of Appeal in Multi-Purpose Holdings Berhad v. Ketua Pengarah Hasil Dalam Negeri the Parliament does not intend its act to violate the Constitution. Hence, a statute must be read harmoniously with the Constitution to avoid any conflict between them which will result in the statute becoming void. Adopting that approach, the Act must, in my judgment be read prospectively to prevent the appellant in that case and those similarly circumstanced from becoming retrospectively criminally liable. Applying that principle I am of the opinion that the criminal charge against the 3rd Applicant in the Syariah High Court is an infringement of Article 7. Further there is nothing in the Syariah Offences Act which provide for any State Religious Body to prohibit any publication. It only creates an offence to publication. As submitted both by the Respondents and Applicants, whenever there is a conflict between a law enacted by the Parliament and a law enacted by the State Legislature, the Court has to follow and adopt a harmonious interpretation of the law. The only logical approach is for Section 7 of the Printing Act to support Section 13 of the Syariah Offences Act ie. notification to the public first, then only the enforcement action.

We live in multi-religious and multi-racial society, such approach would be harmonious and avoid any tension, controversy and conflict into the society and law.

To conclude, I agree with the submission of the Applicants and therefore allow this Application in Prayer (a) to (i) of Enclosure 6.”

“No order as to costs.”

How Indonesia deals with CORRUPTION

March 19, 2013

by Karim  Raslan@ http://www.thestar.com.my

JUSTICE will be an important theme in the upcoming elections. Many Malaysians feel our society is deeply unjust – with the elite (people like myself) enjoying a disproportionate share of the country’s wealth and power, whilst also shirking our responsibilities.

Needless to say, this has made many people very cynical as they watch a parade of well-connected defendants pass through our courts as if they were beyond the reach of the law.

Like it or not, perceptions matter and the prognosis for Malaysia isn’t good.Interestingly – and I know many people will disagree with me – there’s a lot that we can learn from how our neighbour, Indonesia, has dealt with its elite and their transgressions.

Recent events have shown the extent to which Indonesian authorities can be remarkably bold in the face of power.

Last month, Anas Urbaningrum (left), the head of the republic’s ruling Democratic Party was formally declared a suspect in the Hambalang Sports Centre corruption scandal by the all-powerful Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

Anas was accused of accepting kickbacks (including a Toyota Harrier SUV) in return for help to secure projects. Hambalang in West Java has become synonymous with administrative mismanagement and corruption. Indeed, construction costs have mushroomed from125 billion rupiah (RM40.18mil) to 2.5 trillion rupiah (RM803mil).

The political “scalps” have also been noteworthy, including Democratic Party Treasurer M. Nazaruddin (who is currently serving a seven-year prison term) not to mention the former Youth and Sports Minister, Andi Mallarangeng.

Anas’ case has plunged Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s (SBY) party ever deeper into turmoil, in part because he has hinted that the President’s son, Edhie Baskoro Yudhoyono (called “Ibas”), was also involved in Hambalang.

The startling revelations have been front-page news in the republic and have got me thinking about how Indonesia and Malaysia deal with the issue of corruption respectively.

Over the past decade that I’ve spent getting to know Indonesian politicians, many have ended up in court and indeed in prison for various offences.I should note here that Andi Mallarangeng (right) is a personal friend and I’ve interviewed Anas before.

In contrast, I’ve never met a Malaysian leader over the last 30 years who has ever been incarcerated for corruption – the disputable case of Anwar Ibrahim notwithstanding.

Of course, some would say that this proves that Indonesia is more corrupt than Malaysia. Sadly, I’d have to disagree.Instead it shows that the judicial process in Indonesia can be more effective and influence-proof than in Malaysia.Needless to say, this is an extremely worrisome comparison.

Another key factor is that Indonesia’s media is extremely lively and independent. No one political party or leader can possibly control (or intimidate) all the newspapers, websites, radio and TV stations across this nation of 240 million.

Perhaps because of this, the media is unafraid of casting a light on high-level corruption.

With Anas’ case, the constant coverage has been critical in maintaining pressure on the authorities – forcing them to act.

In addition, Indonesia’s KPK (Anti-Corruption Agency) operates entirely independently from the Executive, the Attorney-General’s Office and the Police.

This has sometimes caused trouble – especially when senior Police officers are suspected of corruption. Indeed, turf-wars are inevitable.Still, the KPK, which was founded in 2002 in the aftermath of the Reformasi period has statutory authority and uses it accordingly. It is empowered to investigate and prosecute corruption cases.

This lends the institution with a certain credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of the public.Moreover, both the KPK and the Indonesian media have been entirely fearless in pursuing their respective investigations even if they implicate the First Family.

These guys do not “wimp” out in the face of power. In fact, they seem to gain in determination, leaving no stone unturned.

Ironically, while it is true that a lot of lower-level corruption is overlooked and sometimes snarled up by bureaucratic delays, the very high-profile cases are expedited and more often than not swiftly brought to justice.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, there’s a lot we can learn from our neighbour to the South.

MACC: What more evidence you need ?

Video expose implicates Sarawak CM, kin in alleged land graft

A new video implicates Taib and his family in shady land deals.KUALA LUMPUR, March 19 — An international activist organisation provided today video proof of shady land deals in Sarawak that implicates the state’s Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud and his family, with parts of the clip aired on the Al-Jazeera news channel at 10am.

In a covert investigation, Global Witness (GW) captured on video dealings with Taib’s cousins and several other intermediaries to acquire thousands of hectares of forest land that the London-based activist said revealed the systematic corruption and illegality that lay at the heart of Malaysia’s biggest state.

“This film proves for the first time what has long been suspected — that the small elite around Chief Minister Taib are systematically abusing the region’s people and natural resources to line their own pockets,” said Tom Picken, forest team leader at Global Witness, in a statement released today.

“It shows exactly how they do it and it shows the utter contempt they hold for Malaysia’s laws, people and environment.”

In a 16-minute video clip, GW investigators, who posed as foreign investors, recorded snippets of their conversation with Taib’s cousins and lawyers, to purchase the land for hefty profit and which the environmental campaigner said would displace thousands of the indigenous people living there.

A recorded conversion with sisters Fatimah Abdul Rahman and Norlia Abdul Rahman — who are the daughters of the state’s former Chief Minister Tun Abdul Rahman Ya’akub and first cousins with the incumbent CM — provided a very telling glimpse into the means of how business is conducted in Sarawak to enrich the ruling elite.

Fatimah: Ample Agro belongs to my family, but my sisters, the four elder ones are in the company. The Land and Survey Department, they are the ones who issue this licence… Of course it’s from the CM’s directive but I can speak to the CM very easily.

GW: Can you?

Fatimah: Yes.

GW: And you think he’ll agree?

Fatimah: Yeah, he was the one who gave us the land. He’s my cousin [laughs]. His mother and my father are sisters and brothers, siblings. He’s my cousin so it’s quite easy.

The sisters said they were owners of 5,000 hectares of land given to them for a nominal sum by Taib, and which they were looking to sell under their company, Ample Agro, which they admitted to be a shell company.

GW: You’re proposing basically, Ample Agro, which is your company OK, sell your company, rather than the land. And your company owns the land?

Norlia: Yes… I bought that company as a shell company for this land.

Their lawyer, Alvin Chong, was also recorded in the video telling the GW “investors” how to evade real property gains taxes.

Another lawyer, Huang Lung Ong of Huang & Company Advocates, was also recorded trying to sell land for his uncle, a prominent businessman in Sibu, Datuk Hii Yii Peng, said to have close ties with Taib, saying that at least 10 per cent of the sale price would have to go to the chief minister as commission.

In its statement, GW alleged that senior government officials and a timber company executive said it was standard practice in Sarawak for companies to pay a personal fee to Abdul Taib in return for approval of timber and plantation licences.

London lawyers representing the chief minister have denied the allegations, the NGO reported.

“The Government of Sarawak issues licences for land in very controlled circumstances,” the law firm, Mishcon de Reya, was quoted as saying. “This is an administrative exercise, not political patronage.

“Our client never demands or accepts bribes for the grant of licences and leases.

“He has not issued any ‘directive’… illegally to benefit his cousins.”

Taib, 76, has been Sarawak chief minister for 32 years, having taken office in March 1981.

His personal wealth has stirred much controversy, with detractors alleging he gained much of it through dubious means.

 

GE-13 will be the dirtiest ever: Ahmad Mustapha Hassan

March 16, 2013

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

The 1955 general election, the first Malayan nationwide elections, could be said to have taken place on a level playing field. It was held very much in conformity with Whitehall standards of professionalism.

The media, whether electronic or print, did not bow to the wishes of any political party. They were manned by very professional personalities and provided accurate and objective reports and acted according to the wishes of the people. First and foremost in the minds of everyone was naturally “independence”. Any party that acted otherwise would naturally get zero backing.

Party Negara, which was formed by Datuk Onn Jaafar, was multiracial in character but did not get the support as it was perceived to be too close to the British and not much in favour of political independence. And worse still when Onn was given a knighthood by the British government.

UMNO was formed to fight the British-instigated Malayan Union whereby Malaya would become a complete British colony and no more a British-protected entity. Furthermore, nationalism was on the rise in Asia and Africa after World War II and it was a miscalculation on the part of the British to move the country back into being a British colony.

UMNO,MCA and MIC formed an alliance to fight the general election of 1955 and as the most influential group it was able to trounce all other political parties. The elections could be said to have been fought fairly. The Alliance, as it came to be known later, was not in government during that period and no party had used any government machinery to enhance their chances.

The Election Commission was administered very professionally. Unlike SPRM, it performed its functions without fear or favour.

The second general election held in 1959 and the first after independence could still be said to be clean and fair. This time the Alliance party that had administered the government since independence in 1957 managed to secure 74 of 104 seats in Parliament.

Campaigns were carried out in a very fair manner. All parties were even given air time with the duration being based on the number of candidates they fielded. This was most commendable. The myth of the Alliance’s invincibility had been shattered.

However, subsequent elections saw the playing field gradually tilting towards the party in power. Being clean and fair was deemed be to the disadvantage of the ruling party. Thus began the gradual process of crippling the Opposition.

Leaders of influence would be detained without trial, a practice that the British themselves had previously used to cripple the Malayan Communist Party and the left.

The mainstream media, being too influential and powerful, were acquired by the ruling party, and government media became the tool of the party in power. The mode of political contestation had been changed. The party in power now adopted a system whereby any means would justify the end and the end was simply victory and the continuation of power to administer the country in whatever way they fancied.

The Opposition was muted. This was particularly so after the 1969 election debacle where the ruling party lost its two-thirds majority and the parties in power made a move to consolidate their position by accommodating almost all the other political parties including the PMIP (PAS in subsequent years) and Alliance was changed to National Front or Barisan Nasional (BN). In no time however PMIP was kicked out from BN.

BN became overly confident in its style of government. Corruption and cronyism became the basis for in awarding government contracts. The system was undergoing a complete change from that of a liberal democratic political system to that of an autocracy.

Whatever the Founding Fathers had put in place as checks and balances to the system of governance was unraveled, and the first to be crippled was the Judiciary, after it was regarded by Mahathir to have been against the government and UMNO. The administrative service was slowly but surely politicised with the help of sycophantic senior civil servants. The Royalty too was not spared.

The media, electronic and print became the monopoly of the parties in power. Every single democratic institution had been compromised. In such circumstances, liberal, fair and clean elections can never take place. But technological developments and the emergence of the Internet and social media caused the government to face another formidable opponent.

The official electronic media and the mainstream print media lost their credibility. People turned to the alternate media for reliable news of about what is happening in the country.In desperation, the government of the day turned to corruption as a means of attracting support. Cash in the form of various schemes was handed out to the people to induce them to support the incumbent UMNO-BN government.

They could not come out with any positive policies to combat the programmes put forward by the Opposition coalition. Their lack of appreciation in this matter was due to their overdependence on public relations (PR) work that they had farmed out. The PR strategies don’t seem to have boosted their image but had turned out to be otherwise.As for brain power,UMNO- BN proved to be zero in totality.

The underhand methods used in the past will be brought into play in GE-13 to ensure power would be retained. There have been too many instances already, creating doubts that the next election will be clean and fair.

The BN machinery is now on overdrive. More spins to the news will be churned out. The dirty tricks department will go overboard in producing more material to character assassinate Opposition leaders and various ways will be used to break the Opposition coalition. More money will be offered to the public to attract support.

Harassment and persecution of PR leaders will be more intense.Thugs have been used to disrupt opposition party rallies and talks. Every trump-up excuse is used to employ these thugs to threaten, intimidate and create chaos and these will go on and possibly on a bigger scale as their criminal actions have not been checked by the Police.

From what is happening now the 2013 Elections will be the most undemocratic and the dirtiest of elections Malaysia will ever see.