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Will elections in Malaysia be free or fair?

Posted: 04 May 2013 12:47 AM PDT

http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/89/89/mritems/Images/2013/5/2/201352134412455580_8.jpg 

With voting day fast approaching, there has already been a long stream of evidence of electoral irregularities and breach of election laws.

Ambiga Sreenevasan, Al Jazeera 

On May 5, Malaysians will vote in one of the most contentious general elections in the country's history. Unfortunately, Malaysia's electoral system is plagued by irregularities and unfairness at a time when a strong, independent electoral process is most needed.

Since its inception, Bersih 2.0 - a group pushing for electoral reforms, of which I am a co-chair - has argued for eight key reforms in its campaign for clean and fair elections. Over the past four years, Bersih 2.0 has made inroads in raising public awareness on the necessity for these reforms. The resulting public pressure has forced the federal government and the election commission to take a position on these issues and to make some overtures - albeit not entirely satisfactory - towards electoral reform.

Despite government posturing, however, the only reform that has been implemented for the upcoming general election is the introduction of the use of indelible ink. However, we have expressed our concern that the plan to apply the ink before the vote is cast may result in the smudging of the ballot paper and delays in the voting process.

In view of the flawed electoral process, Bersih 2.0 has launched a project called "Pemantau" in which we are deploying Malaysian citizens to observe the elections across the country. Thus far, Bersih 2.0 has mobilised 2,000 observers in 55 parliamentary districts. The observers will monitor election violations including bribery and the misuse of government resources to benefit particular political parties.

With voting day fast approaching, there has already been a long stream of evidence of electoral irregularities and breach of election laws.

Reports of phantom voters, double registrations, unauthorised registrations and unauthorised changing of voting constituencies have haunted Malaysian elections for years. Despite widespread support for a comprehensive clean-up, the election commission has in our view failed to do so.

The latest report of the Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project shows there are at least 28,593 "voters of foreign origin" on the electoral roll, most of them concentrated in Sabah and Selangor, both of which are considered to be important states in the elections.

The Selangor state government, helmed by the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition, has alleged that 28 percent of the 440,000 new voters in Selangor who have registered since the last elections cannot be identified. However, all attempts by the state government to have the election commissioninvestigate or even hear the complaints havefailed.

Incidents of violence

Over the last year, there have been many reported incidents of violence during political rallies, usually involving a group of people attempting to disrupt the events or to intimidate speakers and participants. The violence is largely targeted at the opposition.

On April 23, the violence reached new heights when a bomb was detonated during a Barisan Nasional political gathering in Penang, resulting in one person being injuredby flying debris. Two other incidents of bombing and the hurling of petrol bombs atBarisan Nasional campaign areas have been reported. Recently, two unknown men with their faces covered by ski masks entered the house of an opposition MP and set fire to his daughter's car.

While the police have recently said they will crack down on any election-related violence, they must be careful that their actions match their words and that there is no disparity in how they deal with violence on either side of the political divide.

There are also many reported instances of fear being used to coerce civil servants and vulnerable or marginalised communities into voting for the ruling party. These tactics include threats that the voters may lose their jobs, pensions, scholarships and other benefits if they support the opposition.

Unsavoury smear campaigns have become a feature of the Malaysian political landscape: for instance, pornographic videos of opposition candidates are constantly surfacing and are widely shown.

Read more at: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/201342982454925143.html 

Election 2013: Are Malaysia’s youth prepared to take history’s call?

Posted: 03 May 2013 05:08 PM PDT

http://cdn.asiancorrespondent.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/AP633296246514_opt.jpg 

It gives a sense that not all of the more than 2.5 million new voters in 2013 are singing from the same songsheet. Not all young voters are confident or convinced that the change is right. 

Rob O'Brien, Asian Correspondent 

In the closest election in its history, Malaysians are standing at a giant crossroads, with just an 'X' between themselves and a new direction.

But not everyone is feeling history's calling.

Among the young voters I've talked to in the southernmost state of Johor, there is a groundswell of support for Anwar Ibrahim's Pakatan Rakyat (PR), the People's Alliance. The rallies that have been held this week have rocked this Barisan Nasional (BN, National Front) stronghold to its core. There is a strong sense of intent, but a level of caution, too.

Believe it or not there are those who are taking no part in Sunday's election at all. I spoke to a young student from Malaysia's University of  Technology (UTM) yesterday, who was gutted that she failed to enrol.

Lee Chuan Hau, 24, and another UTM student says he will be sticking with Prime Minister Najib's BN coalition even though most of his friends are about to back the Opposition. About "three or four out of ten" of his peers will stick with BN, he says.

Read more at: http://asiancorrespondent.com/107172/election-2013-are-malaysias-youth-prepared-to-take-historys-call/ 

Two-party/coalition system not good for Sabah, Sarawak

Posted: 03 May 2013 12:08 PM PDT

http://fz.com/sites/default/files/styles/mainbanner_645x435/public/Joseph%20Pairin%20Kitingan%20and%20sabah%20map_1.jpg 

Patently, Pairin is evidence that Putrajaya is treating the people of Sabah and Sarawak as if they are wearing penis sheaths, living in caves and on trees tops, and swinging from tree to tree. 

Joe Fernandez

INSIGHT ... Sabah and Sarawak are not autonomous in Malaysia as long as Putrajaya is in non-compliance on the constitutional documents on Malaysia.

If Sabah has autonomy as Huguan Siou and Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) President Joseph Pairin Kitingan claims, why is the Chief Minister of this nation in the Federation, for example, appointed by the Prime Minister in Putrajaya?

Pairin no longer makes any sense.

The 12th General Election was supposed to be Pairin's last election in Keningau.

He was thinking of giving way to the younger Kitingan in politics, Jeffrey, or his son.

Now, he's saying that the 13th GE will be his last time in Keningau.

Putrajaya forced him to stand again in Keningau to prevent Jeffrey from entering Parliament and raising Sabah and Sarawak issues.

The key issues are the 20/18 Points, Malaysia Agreement, the unconstitutional Petroleum Development Act, the illegal Oil Agreement, Donald Stephens, revenue-sharing, illegal immigrants on the electoral rolls, the lack of security in Sabah, colonialism, and Sabah and Sarawak being the poorest nations in the Federation after 50 years in Malaysia, in stark contrast to Brunei and Singapore.

If Pairin still has any dignity left in him, he should immediately stop this charade of a campaign.

He should be ashamed of continuing to politicise the position of Huguan Siou which is supposed to unite the people, not divide them.

Why is he doing this to the Orang Asal?

Why is he in cahoots with the very people in Putrajaya who are colonising Sabah and Sarawak?

What sins have the Orang Asal committed to get this shoddy treatment from Pairin?

Hudud, for example, is not in the Malaysia Agreement but Pairin just keeps quiet. At least Bernard Dompok, his one-time right hand man, spoke up against the barbaric criminal code.

What is Pairin's stand, to cite another example, on the Batu Sumpah in Keningau which is one of the constitutional documents on Malaysia?

He just plays deaf, dumb and blind on issues that really matter to Sabah and Sarawak.

Instead, he seems to be very proud of the RM 250 million water treatment plant which the Federal Government will finance in Keningau with a soft loan for the amount.

This is like adding insult to injury. The Federal Government is behaving like an Ah Long in Sabah.

What happened to the nearly RM 50 billion that Putrajaya collected from Sabah alone last year?

The writing is on the wall.

If Pairin can't win after the votes of the illegal immigrants on the electoral rolls are discounted, his election is null and void.

The Election Court can then hand the seat to the runner-up.

No need for fresh election.

Patently, Pairin is evidence that Putrajaya is treating the people of Sabah and Sarawak as if they are wearing penis sheaths, living in caves and on trees tops, and swinging from tree to tree.

Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in Borneo are against the concept of the autonomy of Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysia.

BN has been a failure for 50 years in Sabah and Sarawak and is failing in Malaya. PR is trying to emulate the failure of BN in Sabah and Sarawak while trying to capitalise on the ruling coalition failing in Malaya.

Hence, a two-party/coalition system is only good for Malaya.

If people in Borneo don't realise this today, they will realise it tomorrow.

We need a three-party/coalition system i.e. including a Borneo-based 3rd Force in Parliament to steer evenly between the two-Malaya based national coalitions, BN and PR.

We cannot allow Malayan parties to take Borneo seats in Parliament or in the Sabah and Sarawak state assemblies.

A 3rd Force can support either BN or PR in Parliament to form the Federal Government without itself being part of such a Government.

The 3rd Force should only be in the Federal Government if it can win at least 50 seats in Parliament and can then go on to initiate, form and lead the Federal Government in a temporary coalition with either BN or PR.

In that case, the 3rd Force will hold the Prime Minister's post despite holding less seats than its partner in Government.

Otherwise, no deal.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

There are no permanent friends, and no permanent enemies in politics, only permanent interests.

It's important not to get carried away by our own bullshit in politics.

At the local level, the Sabah Progressive party (Sapp) is projecting itself as a Sabah-based local party, and implying that the State Reform Party (Star) is a Sarawak-based party which has been going nowhere for the last 16 years.

Star is a Borneo-based national party unlike the Malaya-based BN and PR who are only after the seats in the two Borneo nations especially in Parliament.

Sapp was in cahoots with Umno from 1994 to compromise the autonomy of Sabah and only left BN in 2008 when it found itself irrelevant in the coalition since the PBS rejoined.

Sapp is trying to re-invent itself in opposition at the expense of the Orang Asal before frogging back to BN. At present, Sapp is an annoying nuisance like a mosquito.

To cover up this hidden frogging agenda, Sapp is claiming late in the day that it will join PR after the 13th GE.

All along, Sapp had claimed that it could not join PR because it was fighting for the autonomy of Sabah to which PR only paid lip service.

Sapp leaders think the people have forgotten 1994 when their party broke away from PBS and stabbed the people in the back on autonomy.

Sapp has committed hara kiri with its statement on PR and is using autonomy as a fig leaf.

Politics is all about restructuring political power and restructuring the allocation of resources.

The best government for Malaysia is one which is either a minority government or one with a simple majority and lives in fear of the people.

No ruling party should be in power for more than two or three terms at a stretch.

Government must be constantly cut down to size. It must be as small as possible.

The bottomline is that all governments are evil and an unnecessary intrusion into people's lives.

We don't need governments for development.

The politicians will run up the National Debt Burden to put their hands in the National Cookie Jar to feather their own nests under the guise of bringing development to the people.

The people are the best agents to develop a country.


Joe Fernandez is a graduate mature student of law and an educationist, among others, who loves to write especially Submissions for Clients wishing to Act in Person. He also tutors at local institutions and privately. He subscribes to Dr Stephen Hawking's "re-discovery" of the ancient Indian theory that "the only predictable property of the universe is chaos". He feels compelled, as a semi-retired journalist, to put pen to paper -- or rather the fingers to the computer keyboard -- whenever something doesn't quite jell with his weltanschauung (worldview) or to give a Hearing to All. He shuttles between points in the Golden Heart of Borneo formed by the Sabah west coast, Labuan, Brunei, northern Sarawak and the watershed region in Borneo where three nations meet. He's half-way through a semi-autobiographical travelogue, A World with a View.

 

A changed Malaysia come May 6

Posted: 03 May 2013 08:55 AM PDT

Jahabar Sadiq, The Malaysian Insider

No matter which coalition makes the government in the early morning of May 6, one thing is certain — Malaysia has changed and it is business unusual for the new administration.

With the respected Merdeka Center for Opinion Research's latest survey showing a dead heat between both Barisan Nasional (BN) or Pakatan Rakyat (PR), the winner's first job is to respond to a populace that questions and demands more from its government.

Forget the docile and subservient citizenry that thought government always knew best. That worked for some 55 years but this is a new Malaysia where the people are more advanced and ambitious in thought than their politicians.

A population where pensioners and the bloated civil service are no longer a sure vote bank, where racial barriers have collapsed and people are one as Bangsa Malaysia — concerned more about the economy than the personal lives of politicians.

This single-mindedness and unity comes despite the overt racist tones in the campaign since Nomination Day on April 20 or the fear-mongering being played out by certain political parties.

The results of the latest Merdeka Center poll — 42 per cent of the voters agreeing that PR could govern the country against 41 per cent who felt only BN should rule Malaysia — reflect how far the country has come from elections where politicians just pleaded to be a strong opposition.

"Change happens all the time and in the same way that none of us can ever imagine Malaysia regressing to an age where women are not allowed access to education, we cannot ever imagine going back to a politics that is simplistic, patronising, top-down and unchallenged.

"Even the former opposition parties have learned, over the past five years, what it is really like to be in power and having to be accountable to NGOs and public opinion. It's been a learning experience for all of us, and I believe we have grown a little wiser too," well-known academic Dr Farish A. Noor wrote in an essay today.

READ MORE HERE

 

Malaysia

Posted: 03 May 2013 08:50 AM PDT

Farish A Noor, The Malaysian Insider

It is close to midnight and I am typing this as I try to pack up my things and finish off the fieldwork that I have been doing for the past two weeks, covering the election campaign in three different places — Temerloh, Kuala Selangor and Kota Kinabalu.

Lugging an antiquated laptop that dates back to the Jurassic age made of granite has not helped, and my back is wrecked as a result. My eyes are failing me, so excuse the typos as you come across them, too. 

I have been following elections in Malaysia for ages, in 1999, 2004, 2008 and now this one, in 2013. In the course of my work as a wandering academic I've also covered elections in Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.

And I have since grown somewhat cynical about the promises that are made during campaigns, for I have seen them broken too many times as well. 

I have also noticed that despite the rhetoric that has been dished out to people across Asia by Asian politicians, there has almost never been a radical break from the hegemony of the Washington consensus, and the dominance of the ideology of market-driven democratic pluralism. 

I have also seen too many instances where market-driven democracies lead to narrow communitarian politics of group-identity and where pluralism ends up being an excuse for race and religion-based politics.

But perhaps this is the juncture we are at today, and it is a symptom of the times we live in, living as we do in an age of late industrial capitalism and where the rule of the market seems unchallenged. 

Even China, an ostensibly Communist country, is basically a capitalist economy and its real challenge to the West is not a military one but rather a commercial one.

Notwithstanding my cynicism and jaded eyes, I still believe in Malaysia, and that we have a future together. I am wrapping up my work in Sabah and I hope to fly to KL in time to vote tomorrow. (I hope however that I won't be hounded by any election observers who may think I'm some mamak outsider who has come to vote for money!) 

My faith rests on my view as a historian who looks at Malaysia from the perspective of someone who walks through history. There are some among us who lament and fear change and during my interviews with some of the kindly aunties and uncles in the coffeeshops of Kota Kinabalu that's precisely what I heard. They worry about the future, as the elderly are wont to do, but my job as a teacher is to remind them that change has already happened. 

As I said to a tiny aunty whose hands kept reaching for her bag of tissues: "But Aunty, you remember when you went to school right? Remember how in the past people thought girls like you and my mother should not even go to school to learn to read? Their parents thought it was improper for girls to do that. 

"But look around us today and aren't you proud that you went to school, that your daughter did, and that your grand-daughter did too? Has that not changed our society for the better?" 

It was nice to see a little smile peek out from the corner of her tiny face then.

At my university I teach philosophy, discourse analysis and also the history of Southeast Asia. One of the courses I teach is on Malaysian history and society, and I always begin my course with the question: "What is Malaysia". At the end of my course I ask the same question again: "What is Malaysia?"

Indeed, what is Malaysia? 

Well, from the standpoint of being in Sabah at the moment, I can tell you Sabah IS Malaysia, for starters. So many things have happened to this country of ours, so many events, some of them unprecedented, some unanticipated, some unpredicted, some unwelcomed. 

But time and again Malaysia has survived them and Malaysia — as an entity, as an idea — continues to exist. Why? Because Malaysia is not simply an empty signifier that is polysemic and diachronic, but it is also an idea whose meaning is shared by a community of believers. 

People like you and me who are Malaysian believe in Malaysia, and who keep Malaysia alive. WE are Malaysia, and not the trees or rivers or malls or skyscrapers we see around us. It is we — Malaysians — who are the inheritors, depositories, purveyors and transmitters of the Malaysian idea.

Malaysia is a small-to-medium-sized country with no hegemonic ambitions; we know we are not among the world's giants. But even as a country of our stature, we too demand respect from others, as we ought to demand respect for and of ourselves. 

It has been said that this election has been the dirtiest of our nation's history. I would not doubt that, but I've also seen much, much worse in elections elsewhere. 

But what touched me this time round were the manifold instances when I encountered good politicians from different parties who still injected the Malaysian idea in their work and their campaign. I was touched to see and hear Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad of PAS and Saifuddin Abdullah of Umno, both of whom are my friends, speak well of their opponents; and to insist on keeping their campaigns clean and fair. 

It is upon their shoulders — and yours and mine — that I pin my hope that the Malaysian spirit will continue to thrive long after I've kicked the bucket. (Which may be sooner than later at the rate I'm smoking.)

Whatever the result of the elections will be — and here I have to emphasise that I honestly cannot, for the life of me, predict the outcome of the vote on May 5 as this has been the closest and most confusing election I've ever covered — and whoever wins the election this time round, change has already happened. 

We have already seen how the high have been brought low, how trust has now got to be earned and not demanded, how fear has been overcome, and how the old school of politics of patronising drivel has been superseded by the politics of statistics, data, argumentation and debate. 

Change happens all the time and in the same way that none of us can ever imagine Malaysia regressing to an age where women are not allowed access to education, we cannot ever imagine going back to a politics that is simplistic, patronising, top-down and unchallenged. 

Even the former opposition parties have learned, over the past five years, what it is really like to be in power and having to be accountable to NGOs and public opinion. It's been a learning experience for all of us, and I believe we have grown a little wiser too.

READ MORE HERE

 

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