Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
| Anwar, beware of the desperate men Posted: 23 Dec 2012 01:57 PM PST
The Malaysia that we all aspire to has no place for gutter politics. We have no place for PI Bala, Deepak or Musa Hassan. CT Ali, FMT All the usual suspects РAnwar Ibrahim, Subang MP R Sivarasa, PKR vice-president N Surendan and key PKR players Рwhen will they ever learn? "So he [Anwar] said I give you the place, whatever you want to do I help you, but you have to help me lah, of course it is understood lah," said the man in the video. Is this not deja vu again? Have we not heard all this before during the PI Bala inquisition? An inquisition that was supposed to cause "porak peranda" (create chaos and disorder) within Umno by making Najib Tun Razak a liar? And yet on the very next day private investigator P Balasubramaniam made an about-turn to hit Anwar and the usual suspects full in their faces as he retracted his first statutory declaration (SD). And now Deepak Jaikishan and Musa Hassan. It has all the hallmarks of a situation that Anwar and his usual suspects would rub their hands in glee at the prospect of using for their political advantage Рdurian runtuh, says the Malays. These are desperate men who have outlived their usefulness to the powers-that-be but still with a story to tell about intrigues, money politics and corruption in which they themselves were embroiled. These are people that Anwar and his usual suspects can have use of. Desperate and with nowhere to turn, these men will clutch at any straw and go to the ends of the earth to have someone champion their pathetic cause. And that someone is invariably Anwar. You scratch my back, I scratch your back. Shades of corruption, money politics and what happened in Sibu with the Najib "You help me, I help you" rejoinder that our prime minister extended to the people of Sibu. The people of Sibu, to their credit, threw it back to this prime minister of ours with interests. And to try and enhance his non-existing credibility, Deepak brings Nurul Izzah Anwar into this sordid affair, knowing full well that she is about the only credible thing left within PKR, hoping against hope that if he can somehow link Nurul to the mess, some of her credibility will rub onto to his sorry situation. Of course, Anwar denies any involvement in this re-emergence of Deepak. "The allegation [that Pakatan is behind this expos̩] is baseless. Look at the facts," Anwar had said. He had explained that Deepak's expos̩ was clearly linked to a court trial, and that he had no control over court dates. "What has that got to do with us? He wanted to adduce evidence, saying that money was transferred to the PM or his wife. What has that got to do with me?" he had said. Buck stops with Anwar Anwar, what if the emerging facts point to your collusion in using Deepak and this sordid gutter politics of his "untuk mecemar" Najib and Rosmah? What then? What then of your aspirations to be prime minister of Malaysia? What then of Pakatan Rakyat's chances to win the 13th general election? Someone needs to tell Anwar that the bucks stop with him. I will be that person.
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| Malaysian ruling party mobilises for crisis election Posted: 21 Dec 2012 04:19 PM PST
With next year's vote shaping up to be the closest since 1957, UMNO will have no hesitation in resorting to vote-rigging, thuggery and police repression to win. John Roberts, World Socialist Web Site After repeated hints over the past year of an early election, Malaysia's ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) now appears likely to hold the poll close to the deadline for the dissolution of parliament in April next year. The indecision appears to reflect government concerns that the opposition parties might make further gains on top of those at the 2008 election. Addressing UMNO's general assembly earlier this month, Prime Minister Najib Razak called for party unity, saying: "We will be going to the battlefield before too long from now." He said that the election would be no ordinary poll and that the party would have to fight for every vote. Najib is well aware that his job is on the line. He replaced Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as prime minister in 2009, after the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition lost its two-thirds majority in the national parliament in the 2008 poll, as well as five of the country's 13 state governments. As a result, UMNO, which has ruled Malaysia continuously since formal independence in 1957, lost the ability to change the constitution as will—a power that it had used repeatedly to reinforce its autocratic rule. During the assembly, UMNO's women's wing leader Shahrizat Abdul Jalil menacingly warned that there could be a repeat of the 1969 race riots, if "Malays", namely UMNO, lost power. UMNO used its thugs to instigate the race riots after electoral support for the party slumped in the 1969 election. In the wake of the riots, UMNO adopted the so-called New Economic Policy that heavily favoured the Malay majority in business, education and public sector jobs, over the country's ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities. The New Economic Policy fostered rampant cronyism as Malay businesses closely linked to UMNO took advantage of the racially-biased measures. The economy, however, has dramatically altered since the 1960s and 1970s, and is heavily dependent on the continued inflow of foreign investment to feed its export-oriented industries. As a result, the New Economic Policy has come into conflict with the demands of both foreign investors and significant sections of Malaysian business. The policy dilemma facing the government erupted in the midst of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, with an open split between Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who advocated currency and investment controls to protect Malay businesses, and his deputy, Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who pushed the IMF's demands to open up the economy to foreign investors. Mahathir dismissed Anwar, and expelled him and his supporters from UMNO. When Anwar began holding protest rallies against corruption, he was detained, beaten up and eventually convicted on bogus charges of corruption and homosexuality. Released from jail in 2004, Anwar now heads the opposition People's Alliance (PR), comprising his own Peoples Justice Party (Keadilan), the Islamist Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) and the ethnic Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP). None of the underlying issues that emerged in the 1998 crisis has been resolved. In a bid to retain business backing, the BN government under Badawi and Najib has edged closer to the policies advocated by Anwar. But Najib's own limited pro-market restructuring and changes to the New Economy Policy has provoked resentment within UMNO. As far as the corporate elite is concerned, however, the government has not gone far enough. Malaysia is increasingly being hit by a downturn in its export markets in the US and Europe. Official estimates put growth for 2013 between 4.5 and 5.5 percent, but some analysts have predicted it will be as low as 3.5 percent. Najib has announced a target of $444 billion in private sector-led investments by 2020, of which only $70 billion has been received in investment commitments over the past two years. There is also frustration in ruling circles with the government's attempts to woo voters with budget handouts and an increase in the minimum wage. As a result, significant sections of big business have come to view Anwar as more able to impose the policies they require: opening up the economy to foreign investment, ending racially-based cronyism, and implementing an austerity agenda. Read more at: http://wsws.org/en/articles/2012/12/21/mala-d21.html
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