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And the prince makes his move…
Najib, the Queen and the Pope
Malaysia's Sub Scandal Resurfaces
Taken to the cleaners
My daughter Sara graduated today with a B.A. in Marketing Communications
Social Media Plays Major Role in Motivating Malaysian Protesters

Posted: 20 Jul 2011 05:46 AM PDT

Tengku Razaleigh's Amanah has sent the speculation mills into overdrive. Has the prince given up on Umno? Or will he now lead the third force?

(Free Malaysia Today) - The new organisation set up by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah may signal the Kelantan prince's disenchantment with Umno, suggested a prominent blogger.

He also believes that the veteran politician will not defend his Gua Musang parliamentary seat under the Barisan Nasional ticket.

In his blog MSOMalaysia, Mohd Sayuti Omar said Razaleigh's Amanah (Angkatan Amanah Merdeka) reflected his frustration towards Umno and that the latter no longer believes he can reform the party from within.

"The question is what is the purpose of Amanah?

"Will it move to support Umno or go against Umno? Will Amanah that is said to be based on the legacy of Tunku Abdul Rahman forge cooperation with the opposition in the coming election?

"The logic is Razaleigh will not be enthusiastic about leading the NGO if it is not to repair Umno… (but) he has given thought about his future and has lost confidence in Umno. I can see from this that he will not contest under the BN ticket anymore," he added.

Amanah to lead third force?

Amanah, to be launched this Friday, aims to rekindle the spirit of unity, justice and good governance as espoused by the country's founding fathers which Razaleigh said is the duty of Umno to preserve.

The Gua Musang MP, however, has been critical towards the ruling party and made statements that Umno has deviated from its original struggle and is now corrupt.

The setting up of Amanah is seen as a platform to pursue this objective while some observers claim that the NGO may potentially be the leading platform for a third force given Razaleigh's calibre as a respected politician.

A news report quoted Amanah central committee and PAS member Wan Saiful Wan Jan as saying that the NGO will have "prominent leaders" on its committee.

It is understood that the 15-20 member committee will also include leaders from BN as well as Pakatan Rakyat.

"You might be surprised when you see who is in the committee," Wan Saiful said.

'Those who lost faith in Najib'

Commenting on the composition of the committee, Sayuti said while there are no details, he is however confident that it will include Umno politicians who have lost faith in the party's struggle.

"It will also comprise ex-top civil servants who no longer believe in Umno's struggle and the leadership of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak.

"Who are they (members of the committee)? There are a few Umno veterans with Razaleigh and his loyal supporters. It also includes the children of Umno leaders who no longer believe in Umno, which has gone astray from its original struggle," added the blogger.

Razaleigh was touted as the best candidate to lead the country next to his former Umno comrade, current Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim, and was said to be in talks with Pakatan over such a prospect, but he denied the speculation.

READ MORE HERE

Najib, the Queen and the Pope

Posted: 19 Jul 2011 02:09 PM PDT

(The Diplomat) Marrying the demands of international diplomacy with the political realities of home is a tough ask for most countries and their foreign ministries. The two can be a difficult fit, as Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has found out all too well.

Some back home seem determined to provide an unwanted backdrop for his whistle-stop European tour designed to shore-up his country's vastly improving relations with the West and bring in some much needed foreign investment.

However, echoes of the Bersih movement and their demands for electoral reform have dogged Najib and his entourage from London to Rome, while the prime minister's own supporters have provided the nastiest thorn in his political side with wild and unsubstantiated claims of unwanted foreign meddling in domestic affairs.

Much of the initial fault lies with Najib. He declared the July 9 Bersih rallies in Kuala Lumpur and across the country illegal and failed to muzzle his own party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), and fringe elements threatening what should have been a simple and peaceful march.

The police moved in with a heavy hand. Protesters were baton charged, tear gassed and beaten. People wearing yellow, the colour synonymous with the Bersih movement were arrested.

Najib defended the police action, deeming it necessary to keep the peace while attempting to demonize what was as much a mums and dads rally calling for clean elections as an opposition attempt to topple the government.

Playing to a home audience, his government quickly blamed prejudices in the international media for the negative portrayal that made headlines around the world, and Najib was probably hoping the mess would be quietly forgotten as he packed his bags for England.

No such luck.

Supporters of Bersih, which means clean in Malay, in London booed Najib as he went to Downing Street for lunch with his British counterpart David Cameron. He and First Lady Rosmah Mansor later met with the Queen, who surprised all by wearing yellow against a backdrop of yellow flowers.

The choice of outfit from such an astute and experienced head of state was widely interpreted as a sympathetic sign of support for Bersih, although the Queen's dress sense seemed to escape the attention of fashionistas on state-linked newspapers in Malaysia.

Malaysia's Sub Scandal Resurfaces

Posted: 19 Jul 2011 01:30 AM PDT

French prosecutors edge closer to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak

The French prosecutors are not expected to investigate Altantuya's death as such. Instead, they are following the case on the basis that it is illegal to pay or take kickbacks in France. If the €114 million is found to be a kickback, the French prosecutors can act, Bourdon said.

John Berthelsen, Asia Sentinel

The noose could be tightening on one of Malaysia's greatest military procurement scandals, the US$1 billion purchase of French-built Scorpène submarines commissioned by then-Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak in 2002.

The latest developments come at a time when Najib, as prime minister, has been touring Europe, meeting with Queen Elizabeth and Pope Benedict XVI in an effort to repair an image battered by an ugly crackdown on July 9 against tens of thousands of protesters asking for reforms of Malaysia's electoral system, which is regarded as rigged to keep the ruling national coalitoin in power.

The scandal allegedly involves French politicians, the giant state-owned DCNS defense contractor and politicians and military procurement units across the world. The scandal netted a company owned by Najib's close friend Abdul Razak Baginda, €114 million in "commissions," according to testimony in Malaysia's Parliament. Some of the money is rumored to have been kicked back to French and Malaysian politicians.

French investigators have been poring over DCNS records for months in connection with the larger scandal. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission has declined to investigate the scandal, maintaining that the giant commission was payment for legitimate services.

"It is likely that in September we should have access to the first police conclusions from all the investigations that have taken place over the last 18 months," Paris-based lawyer William Bourdon told Asia Sentinel Tuesday. "We know that the police seem to have obtained quite crucial documents."

Bourdon, the leader of a team of lawyers investigating the case, is to visit Kuala Lumpur on July 20 to confer with Suaram, the NGO that has filed a complaint with French authorities over the scandal. The question in France is whether under French law an NGO can act as a complainant. That will be decided in coming days by a French judge, Bourdon said. He added that he is confident that he will succeed.

For years, Malaysian authorities have been trying to keep the scandal under the carpet. The matter broke into the open in 2006, however, with the gruesome murder of Mongolian translator and party girl Altantuya Shaariibuu, who had served as a translator for part of the submarine deal. She had been shot in the head and her body was blown up with military explosives, Her last words, according to a confession by one of her killers, was that she was pregnant. The fact that her body was blown up has led to suspicions that the killers were trying to hide evidence of who the father might be.

The French prosecutors are not expected to investigate Altantuya's death as such. Instead, they are following the case on the basis that it is illegal to pay or take kickbacks in France. If the €114 million is found to be a kickback, the French prosecutors can act, Bourdon said.

According to Altantuya's final letter, which was found in a hotel room after her death, she was supposed to have received a US$500,000 fee for her work. After a whirlwind courtship in which she was given thousands of dollars and whisked off to Paris and other destinations by Razak Baginda, who is married, according to testimony, Altantuya was jilted by and ended up in front of his Kuala Lumpur house, calling him a "bastard" and demanding that he come out to face her.

Shortly after that, a sedan full of Malaysian police officers pulled up and took her away. She was never seen alive again. In the letter left behind at her death, she said she had been blackmailing Razak Baginda, at that time a well-connected political analyst.

Two of Najib's bodyguards have been convicted and sentenced to death for her murder. Abdul Razak Baginda was acquitted in a trial seemingly held to make sure top government officials' names would not come out. He fled to the UK and has not been back to Malaysia since.

French investigators have been going through the state-owned DCN's records for months. In France, the scandal has major implications. Tied to the global sales of weaponry have been deaths and scandal not only in Malaysia but in Pakistan, Taiwan and France itself. Allegations of kickbacks being examined by French prosecutors go clear up to former French President Jacques Chirac, former Prime Ministers Dominique de Villipin and Edouard Balladur and the country's current president, Nicholas Sarkozy in addition to an unknown number current and former French defense executives. Military procurement officials in Taiwan, India, Chile and Brazil may be involved, in addition to Malaysia.

READ MORE HERE

Taken to the cleaners

Posted: 19 Jul 2011 01:15 AM PDT

Political affray in Malaysia

An overzealous government response to an opposition rally

The Economist

MALAYSIA is one of South-East Asia's stabler nations; but a rally in Kuala Lumpur on July 9th in demand of electoral reform turned surprisingly nasty, leading to the arrest of more than 1,600 people. The police fired tear gas and water cannon into the crowd, and one man died of a heart attack. All those arrested were released fairly quickly, but Amnesty International, a London-based human-rights group, called it "the worst campaign of repression in the country for years". The government's reaction showed a lot of nervousness about how much opposition it can tolerate.

In fact the crackdown started a few weeks ago after "Bersih 2.0" announced that it was going to stage the rally. Bersih, also known as The Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections, is a loose alliance of NGOs and activists (bersih means "clean"). It argues that all candidates should be given access to the mainstream media and that indelible ink should be used to stop people voting more than once. It all sounds uncontroversial, but not to the government. Bersih was declared illegal on July 1st and about 200 activists were rounded up. The march itself was then banned, although the authorities offered Bersih a stadium to meet in—and then withdrew the offer.

Perhaps the government was looking back nervously to the first Bersih march, in 2007. On that occasion, too, thousands protested against the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition government and demanded reform. Subsequently, in the 2008 general election, the BN lost its largest share of votes since 1957 when it started ruling the country after the British left. The current prime minister, Najib Razak, deputy prime minister in 2007 before taking over the top job in an internal party coup, must have feared that the second Bersih rally might be a similar portent. He has to hold an election before 2013, but wants to do so earlier to win his own mandate. Opposition politicians were quick to join Bersih. The pre-eminent leader of the opposition, Anwar Ibrahim, was shoved to the ground and injured in the affray.

None of this bodes well for Malaysia. The heavy-handed police tactics have provoked a lot of anger; the government has conceded an official investigation into claims of police brutality. In one instance (caught on film), police seemed to fire tear gas and water cannon into a hospital where protesters were sheltering from a baton charge. Few old laws were left untouched in the attempt to round up suspects before the march. It was reported that 30 people arrested in Penang were investigated under Section 122 of the Penal Code for the charge of waging war against the king. Dragging in the constitutional monarch, Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin, seemed particularly desperate, reminiscent of the abuse of the monarchy's position in neighbouring Thailand. On the eve of the rally, the king came out with a statement reminding everyone that "street demonstrations bring more bad than good, although the original intention is good."

Mr Najib defended the police and accused the marchers of sowing chaos. Dismissing the motives of Bersih, he cast it as a desperate attempt by Mr Anwar to grab power. The immediate upshot is that Mr Najib may choose to delay calling for an election for some time, to let things settle down. He presumably hopes that if he waits long enough, people will have forgotten about this ugly incident. But the longer-term effects are hard to judge. It might also help to unite a fractious opposition against what they portray as an assault on democracy.

My daughter Sara graduated today with a B.A. in Marketing Communications

Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:52 AM PDT

Social Media Plays Major Role in Motivating Malaysian Protesters

Posted: 18 Jul 2011 06:11 AM PDT

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter have played a major role in motivating some of the demonstrators in the run-up to the rally, which went ahead despite a police ban and lockdown imposed on sprawling Kuala Lumpur on the eve of the July 9 protest.

Simon Roughneen, Media Shift

Less than a week after Malaysian police fired teargas and water cannons at thousands of demonstrators seeking reform of the country's electoral system, a Facebook petition calling on Prime Minister Najib Razak to quit has drawn almost 200,000 backers, highlighting the role of social and new media in Malaysia's restrictive free speech environment.

One contributor to the page wrote: "The world is full of multimedia and electronics; the things we so call camera and videocam ... And photos and videos were already being uploaded on the Internet but 'it' still denies the truth and makes stories and lies until today."

The demonstration organizer, Bersih 2.0 -- a coalition of 63 NGOs (non-government organizations) that wants changes such as updated electoral rolls and a longer election campaign period -- has its own Facebook page, attracting a similar number of "likes" as the page urging Najib to step down, with 190,000+ fans at the time of this posting.

The latest notable update is another petition, requesting 100,000 backers for a Bersih 3.0 -- although organization head Ambiga Sreenavasan has said she does not foresee any similar protests in the immediate future.

Clearing Distorted coverage

Along with online news sites such as Malaysiakini and Free Malaysia Today, social networks have helped get around partisan coverage by newspapers close to the government, where accounts of the rally did not square with what I witnessed.

Protestors flee as police prepare to fire tear gas. Photo: Simon Roughneen.

Coverage in Utusan, the pro-government Malay-language daily and best-selling print newspaper in Malaysia, was explicitly hostile to the protest and has remained so in the days since. Just this week, the paper came out with an editorial claiming that Jewish groups would use the opposition to infiltrate the Muslim country. The day after the rally, the front page of the English-language New Straits Times (NST) showed a single protestor, face covered with a scarf, looking set to hurl something at someone or something, minus the surrounding street scene.

The photo was headlined "Peaceful?" and was devoid of context, the implication being that Kuala Lumpur was beset by thousands of other would-be anarchists on July 9 and the police acted with heroic restraint in the face of relentless provocation. The NST is linked to Malaysia's main governing party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), which has ruled uninterrupted since independence in 1957.

As observed at several locations around the city center, the protest was peaceful, multi-ethnic (Malaysia's demographic breakdown is two-thirds ethnic Malays, a quarter ethnic Chinese, and the remainder mainly Indian/Tamil), though it was impossible to know how many in the gathering were affiliated with the country's opposition political parties versus how many were ordinary, disgruntled Malaysians who were galvanized into action by Bersih's exhortations.

With police roadblocks and checks emptying the usually bustling city by Friday evening, the only other people on the streets on Saturday morning -- before the demonstrators' emergence -- were expectant journalists and lost-looking tourists. When the protestors came onto the streets, the police wasted little time in firing teargas into the crowds gathering at various locations in an attempt to march to the Merdeka (Victory) Stadium, where the country declared its independence from Great Britain.

Despite allegations of police aiming tear gas or water cannons directly at protestors or at a hospital in the city, print newspapers praised the police response, as did the government. That, in turn, has drawn criticism from Malaysia's online news sites.

READ MORE HERE

Kredit: www.malaysia-today.net

Rabu, 20 Julai 2011

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

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