Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
- The Sabah factor in Umno’s GE battle
- Making Dewan Rakyat effective
- MCA and hudud: Final part
- MCA and hudud: Part 3
| The Sabah factor in Umno’s GE battle Posted: 22 Oct 2011 06:20 PM PDT In Sabah politics, the real battle for power is between the Bajau Muslims and the Umno Malays. If Sabah and Sarawak were left out from the calculation, it is BN with only 86 seats against the Pakatan Rakyat coalition with 82 seats. With this slim seat difference, BN would have risked losing power in the event of crossovers. Clearly, without the 54 seats from Sabah and Sarawak, BN would not be able to form a stable government. By Arnold Puyok, Free Malaysia Today Much attention has been given to Sabah after the 2008 general election. This is understandable as Sabah contributed a substantial number of parliamentary seats to the national parliament. In fact without Sabah, Barisan Nasional would have lost power. In order to see this clearly, it is important to look at Sabah's electoral contribution in a proper perspective. There were 222 seats contested in the 2008 elections. BN won 140 seats. But it was eight seats short of a two-thirds majority in parliament. For BN, having a two-thirds majority is a "prerequisite" for establishing a strong and stable government – a "standard" set by former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Given Malaysia's political convention, having two parties forming a coalition government is almost impossible. Of the 140 seats BN won, Sabah and Sarawak contributed 54 seats thus giving BN the advantage of a simple majority. Umno's 'bank' With this slim seat difference, BN would have risked losing power in the event of crossovers. Clearly, without the 54 seats from Sabah and Sarawak, BN would not be able to form a stable government. With the 2008 election results, Sabah and Sarawak are BN's fixed deposits and hold the key for BN's survival. Sabah, however, is given more attention than Sarawak due to Umno's strong presence in the state. Aside from Sabah receiving the largest financial allocation of RM16 billion under the Ninth Malaysia Plan, it also has four Sabahans as federal ministers in the national cabinet. Sarawak on the other hand has only two. Bajau challenge Although conflict have begun to resurface following allegations of dominance by Musa's allies, Musa's skillful political maneuverings is keeping the "rebels" tamed. In Sabah, Musa's strongest challenge comes from the Bajau community, the second largest ethnic group in the state. Even though a substantial number of the Bajaus are Sabah Umno members, some are not happy with the alledged domination of the "Malays" led by Musa. The three Bajau leaders who pose a threat to Musa's leadership are Salleh Said Keruak, Amirkahar Mustapha and Pandikar Amin Mulia—also known as the"big three" in USBO (United Sabah Bajau Organisation). Except for Amirkahar, Salleh and Pandikar wield a significance influence among the Bajau community. Sabah Umno is anxious about the rise of USBO whose re-branding in 2006 was seen as an attempt to replace Sabah Umno as a party to represent the Muslims in Sabah. When Musa decided to drop all three as candidates in the 2008 elections, it was seen as an attempt to chip away the Bajau influence in Sabah Umno. Musa, however, was quick to prevent dissatisfaction among the Bajau community. He quickly gave Salleh and Pandikar important roles in government. The Bajau factor will remain an important political challenge for Musa to overcome. Kadazandusun factor The voice of the Kadazandusun community is essentially coming from PBS (Parti Bersatu Sabah) which is the largest Kadazandusun-based party in the state. In its party congress, PBS suggested that the power sharing arrangement in Sabah should be based on 70:30 ratio. This means, if there are 10 vacant political positions in a PBS-controlled constituency, seven should be appointed among its members while the rest from other parties. While no visible changes could be seen arising from this demand, Musa however seems to be continuing to enjoy the Kadazandusun support through the 'Huguan Siou' Joseph Pairin Kitingan, who is also deputy chief minister. PBS, while synonymous with the fight for state rights and autonomy, has however been criticized for being too "soft" on issues such as illegal immigrants, regional autonomy and economic imbalance between East and West Malaysia. But PBS supporters argue that it is more politically viable to talk about these issue behind close doors. Pairin, it seems, prefers not to use a confrontational approach in pursuing the Sabah issues. Nonetheless as far as Musa is concerned, the Kadazandusun support for him remains intact and will not pose a serious challenge to Sabah Umno.
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2011 01:47 PM PDT By Patrick Lee, FMT PETALING JAYA: With political rhetoric and agenda-spewing on a daily basis, many MPs on both sides of the political divide believe that Parliament has a long way to go. Instead of talking about national or local issues, many MPs, according to Cameron Highlands MP (MIC) SK Devamany, prefer to sensationalise. "Issues are simply created, and this spinning culture should be checked. It's happening so much that the House Speaker has to interfere too many times." "You get people who are simply interrupting, don't follow the Standing Orders or the debate topics set aside for the rakyat," he told FMT. Devamany said that while the Dewan Rakyat allowed for both humourous and serious moments, a number of MPs preferred to target their political rivals with "cheap shots". "These are things that will give a wrong image of the Dewan to the masses," he lamented. Agreeing with him was Klang MP (DAP) Charles Santiago who said that important policies were often ignored because of political bickering. "It is a failure, because you (as an MP) are elected with a mandate to discuss and evaluate policies that are good for the rakyat." "(Because) a lot of people debate on rhetoric and political agenda, policy issues are thrown under the carpet…Compared to other parts of the world, we have a very long way to go," he said. Heated arguments, complete with name-calling and all types of slurs are a common sight in the Dewan Rakyat, with MPs regularly tossing jabs at each other. Some appear to do it out of fun, while others have been known to take it too far. Lack of time cited
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| Posted: 21 Oct 2011 10:58 AM PDT By Stanley Koh, FMT At a 2006 forum to discuss problems that non-Muslims face as Malaysian officialdom continues to assert the predominance of Islam in the country, a prominent scholar acknowledged – "with "sadness", he said – that there was great confusion about the religion, especially among Muslims themselves. Syed Ali Tawfik al-Attas, director-general of the Institute of Islamic Understanding (Ikim), said that Muslim administrators and Islamic activists generally had a poor understanding of the Islamic view of "knowledge" even as they examined the religion with a fine-tooth comb. "That is the problem with the Muslim world," he declared. He explained that in Islamic scholarship, knowledge is generally separated into three types: interpretation of the meaning of what is perceived, revealed knowledge, and derived knowledge that is beneficial. This effectively means that non-beneficial knowledge is not construed as knowledge. He stressed the importance of having the correct understanding of such terminologies as "freedom", "democracy" and "Islamisation" and the equal importance of recognising that they were open to different conceptualisations. Citing an example, he said the word the Arabs use for "democracy" could be translated as "preservation of the mind", which implies a wealth of meanings. "Yet, this preservation is today limited to halal-haram issues," he said, adding that this was one symptom of "the truncation and tragedy of Islam". The forum that Syed Ali addressed, which was organised by a group of think-tanks, shed much light on issues raised during the 2001 forum that MCA held following Dr Mahathir Mohamad's declaration that Malaysia was an Islamic state. Many of those issues centred around the unhappiness of non-Muslims with the arrogance of the civil service in deciding on and implementing policies that affected the religious practices of non-Muslims. Syed Ali's presentation made it quite clear that such arrogance was born of ignorance. The Moorthy controversy Referring to the case of Everest climber Maniam Moorthy, who died in 2005 and was buried as a Muslim in the face of his family's objections, Syed Ali said it would not have been such a big issue if the officials in charge had been more knowledgeable and less arrogant. He explained that in Islam it does not matter where one is buried. He said the Moorthy controversy illustrated how it was the mind of Muslims, and not Islam itself, that was limited. At the MCA forum, representatives from the Inter-Religious Council of Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism spoke of difficulties in getting approval for land on which to build places of worship and even for the renovation of those places. Rev Wong Kheng Kong said civil servants carried out their work with a clear bias for Islam instead of sticking to the constitutional provisions on religious rights. He feared that Mahathir's declaration would make matters worse.
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| Posted: 20 Oct 2011 04:21 PM PDT By Stanley Koh, FMT
Few will disagree that politicians are often trapped in history and history in them. MCA politicians should take heed. Unfortunately, when they throw stones at their rivals, they often forget that they live in a house of glass. When in 1993 the Kelantan government proposed the law allowing hudud punishments, the two Umno representatives in the state assembly supported it. The law, formally called the Syariah Criminal Code (11) Enactment 1993, was passed in November of that year. There was no public outcry and the MCA leadership did not threaten to leave Barisan Nasional. The only justification for the silence was that the then prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, had already objected to the passing of the bill. Fast forward to the present. MCA President Dr Chua Soi Lek recently said he would pull his party out of BN if its political master, Umno, ever decided to impose hudud. Is he in fact trying to rehash the anti-hudud position that his party took during the campaign for the 1999 general election? The results showed that the ruse worked. Five years earlier, the MCA publication Guardian featured an article by Dr Ling Liong Sik, in which the then party president remarked: "The MCA has always chosen partners who are moderates and are willing to discuss. Malaysia has no room for extremists and religious fanatics." Was he referring to PAS and hudud? The answer lies somewhere in a subsequent sentence: "The DAP, being a party of opportunistic bankrupt politicians who are constantly criticising for the sake of criticism, are a threat to the wellbeing of all Malaysians. I am grateful the hudud law issue has exposed the DAP." Taliban types He acknowledged that Mahathir's announcement might frighten the non-Muslims but explained that the idea was to prevent the emergence of the Taliban types. Hamid in fact tried to teach MCA how to explain the issue to its constituents. He said they should be told that the Malaysian-style Islamic state would be based on locally established traditions and practices as well as universal practices suitable for Malaysians. These would be unlike the practices associated with such countries as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which were, according to him, based on local traditions and not necessarily Islamic. He noted that while men and women were segregated at Saudi airports, for instance, there was no such segregation inside the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Zainah Anwar, the executive director of Sisters in Islam, spoke at length on the impact of Islam on legal and political systems and the concerns it raises. Among other things, she said: "Islam 1,400 years ago granted women equal rights unheard of in other religions and societies—the right to divorce, rights of ownership and disposal of property, dowries and the banning of female infanticide. "We believe that our fellow Malaysians who are non-Muslims have the right to seek clarification, understanding and to express their concerns, their confusion in these uncertain and difficult times as to what is going on in the Muslim world in general." She said one of the main concerns of her movement was the "injustice and discrimination" against Muslim women at the hands of religious authorities. "The challenge for us today, and in many Muslim countries, is the main political conflict—not so much between Muslims and others, but rather among Muslims with contending visions of Islam and the shape of the nation state. And in this battle on what is Islam and who practices the right Islam, it is the status of women that is the first casualty.
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