Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
- UMNO – Malaysia’s scourge
- YB Kota Belud, electoral roll is not your child's buku salinan
- Bye-bye, Star! Bye-bye NST!
- Do You Not Sense Stupidity At Its best?
| Posted: 04 Jul 2011 05:10 PM PDT The children were among democracy activists who were jointly charged under the Societies Act in connection with the BERSIH 2.0 rally scheduled for this Saturday, 9 July, in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. The court action is the latest in a widening government crackdown on the rally organisers, who have also received unsourced death threats and suffered harassment and intimidation by Malaysian police and government authorities. Hundreds of thousands of Malaysians are nevertheless readying to rally this Saturday, despite the government banning all BERSIH 2.0 rallies and declaring the organising NGO group, BERSIH 2.0, illegal. Worldwide, Malaysians and their supporters will take to the streets of capital cities on the same day, supporting the call for electoral reform amid mass arrests in Malaysia and in defiance of the 'ban' and 'illegal organisation' edicts. Global solidarity walks and demonstrations will be led by Malaysians residing abroad in London, Paris, Geneva, Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Auckland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Washington next Saturday. More than 100 activists have been arrested or questioned by police in Malaysia this past week, for their roles in helping to organise Saturday's KL rally. In a late development on July 2, six officers of Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM – Socialist Party of Malaysia), who had been released after their June 25 detentions in the island state of Penang for supporting the rally, were re-arrested under the Emergency Ordinance (EO). The activists were reportedly charged with "inciting national unrest" and "waging war against the king" – the latter a charge that is tantamount to treason and punishable by death. By late evening on July 3, more arrests were being conducted in Malaysia, and Sungei Siput Opposition MP Dr Michael Jeyakumar and the other 5 PSM activists were taken to police headquarters in Bukit Aman, KL. The EO allows for indefinite detention without trial and was described by a well placed official in Malaysian politics as "a cousin of the Internal Security Act", which also allows the government to detain citizens without the need to present them in court. Referring to the ongoing arrests and statements from Malaysia's highest offices, the source said: "This is now a no-holds-barred situation." Donna Guest, Deputy Asia-Pacific Director at Amnesty International, said: "The Malaysian authorities are muzzling calls for electoral reform by throwing peaceful protesters in jail. "We have not seen such a crackdown on political activists across Malaysia in many years. "Malaysia is undermining its claim to be a moderate democracy through this campaign of repression."
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| YB Kota Belud, electoral roll is not your child's buku salinan Posted: 04 Jul 2011 02:25 PM PDT YB Abdul Rahman Dahlan of Kota Belud wrote in length on his blog in defence of the Election Commission (EC), "Sorry, you don't convince me Ambiga". YB Khairy Jamaluddin of Rembau, who currently is conspicuously absent from the country on some flotilla mission, quickly tweeted "Fantastic article. Intellectually demolishes Bersih". It would be fine if YB Rembau actually tweeted "funtastic", because YB Kota Belud seemed having fun writing the article by taking the electoral roll lightly. If these two YBs are the remaining intellectual YBs left in the ruling class UMNO, producing such intellectually deficient article, no wonder the sorry state of Malaysia in all fronts. (And adding in the endemic, Malaysia is an aspiring Zimbabwe in the making.) YB Kota Belud effectively saw the electoral roll like his child's buku salinan, where one practises new words, repeats them (in the case of the electoral roll, literally) and crosses out mistakes. The electoral roll is the very foundation of our democracy. It requires almost impeccable accuracy and quality, in order to build confidence and faith in the electoral system. Almost, because honest mistakes and errors in rare occasions are bound to happen for a register of a few million records. It is therefore the prerogative and mission of the EC to achieve such high standard. YB Kota Belud wrote like the spokesperson of the EC, stating that it is the responsibility of Malaysians to inform the EC when their family members pass away and should be removed from the electoral roll. To be fair, it is impossible to expect the EC to ensure zero dead voters on the roll. But it is in its interest to institute mechanisms that will help to ensure that. If the EC is indeed honest and discharges its responsibility honourably, it would have come out with such mechanisms years ago. The truth is, none. YB Kota Belud, nobody is asking the EC to remove dead voters unilaterally. That would be illegal, as you rightly pointed out. But it takes a mechanism as simple as flagging out voters age 100 and above and subjecting these records for further follow-up and verification with other official records, etc. The world is never perfect and perfect solution is nowhere to be found. But as the saying goes, hendak seribu daya, tak hendak seribu dalih. Actions speak volume than defences and counter-accusation. I am not an expert in electoral systems, nor am I experienced in poll monitoring. So I am not in the position to comment on your points in support of the current postal vote system. But I have been reading enough on reliable sources of reports that practice on the ground is far from what you described. Examples include non-BN party observers disallowed from observing the polling process, officers casting votes on behalf of their subordinates, and discrepancies between the official number of postal voters and the actual votes cast. We shall not generalise based on these reports, but the number of reports and seriousness of such irregularities are a genuine cause for concern, hence the call for reform of the postal vote system. True to his colour of an UMNO politician, YB Kota Belud conveniently swept aside the claim by his opposite counterpart YB Azmin Ali that six voters of different ethnicity are registered using the address belonging to Azmin's mother. Don't belittle any claims of irregularity, be it from Azmin Ali, or Ahmad, Ah Kow or Muthusamy, for that matter. Especially in this case, the claim is verified true by the EC official. Again, it takes only a simple mechanism to flag out addresses with abnormally high number of voters registered to them and follow up the cases accordingly. Let me add my own case of different flavour. My parents' family has been residing on the same address for more than 40 years. We have been voting for Segamat constituency, until another new constituency, Sekijang, was created. Our family was forced to split, literally. Only my eldest sister and my mother remain voters of Segamat, while the rest of us have been conveniently assigned to the new Sekijang seat. How funny it is that when a candidate visit our home, he or she needs to be reminded that some of us are not in his/her constituency. Incidentally, Segamat seat has now become almost an impossibility for the Opposition. Of course not to forget the 739 double postal voter records that I have uncovered in 2008. Mind you, I am not a full-time programmer or professional data mining expert with access to the full EC database. If I could uncover 278 double records by working on my laptop on a three-hour journey, what could the EC has achieved with a proper data mining exercise against its full database? Talking about EC competency... Read more at: https://airkosong.com/_/2011/07/05/yb-kota-belud-electoral-roll-is-not-your-childs-buku-salinan/ | |||||
| Posted: 04 Jul 2011 02:09 PM PDT I made one, and my family another stupendous decision today. First, I decided to go yellow on the blog. ROS and Kerismudin, please take note! My family then spoke to our daily newspaper delivery boy this morning and gave him the bad news. We decided to cancel with immediate effect our subscriptions to the Star, Sunday Star and the Sunday Times (NST Group). We felt nothing but regret and sorrow. For the delivery boy, that is. We'd known him for over 10 years. For the spinmeisters, we felt nothing but contempt, loathing and disgust. I was particularly incensed after reading excerpts in these cat litterliners that DSAI was guilty of a crime, er..., what exactly I don't know. It had been alleged by the AG, his deputy AND Defence Counsel in open court that certain unknown "experts" in USA and/or Korea had identified DSAI 99.99% as a participant in an a sex video by using high tech facial and body identification techniques. Hard evidence was not presented by anyone since DSAI was nowhere named as a party to the case! Oh, you beauty! (About a year or two ago, it was for that precise reason that the Court of Appeals expunged certain statements from a judgement made by Judge Sri Ram that mentioned Tun Daim Zainuddin - that Tun was not a party to the relevant court case and should not have been been implicated when he could not legally defend himself! That's my amateur interpretation of that matter). Certain choice expressions leap to mind: 1. Kangaroo Court ( I mean, why did the Honourable judge allow it or not expunge wild flying allegations?) 2. Trial by Innuendo 3. Trial by Media 4. Conspiracy What's even more beautiful is that a defence lawyer expressed being mega impressed with a former CM's credentials. That former CM was once accused of having sex with a minor, which constitutes STATUTORY RAPE. In that instance, the Government through the AG later withdrew the charges. I could be wrong, but I vaguely recall that several others were charged and convicted of having sex with the same minor! It was also the instance when a DAP politician, now CM of Penang, was sent to prison. Here is the summary of that sordid episode in M'sian legal history when a man was sent to prison for defending an under-aged Malay girl on a matter of principle. Refer Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lim_Guan_Eng: "Lim was arrested by Malaysian police in 1994, following his criticism of the government's handling of allegations of statutory rape of one of his constituents by former Chief Minister of the state of Melaka, Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Thamby Chik. Consequently, while the Attorney General decided not to charge Rahim Thamby Chik, Lim was charged under Section 4(1) (b) of the Sedition Act 1948 for causing 'disaffection with the administration of justice in Malaysia'. Lim was also charged under Section 8A (1) of the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 for 'maliciously printing' a pamphlet containing allegedly 'false information' because he had described the alleged rape victim as an 'imprisoned victim' because she was initially detained by Malaysian police without parental consent for 10 days. During the judicial procedure, Lim was quoted saying:
After a series of appeals, Lim was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. He was, however, released after 12 months on August 25, 1999. Due to his incarceration he was disallowed from standing for election to public office for a period of 5 years, and he was therefore ineligible to contest in the 2004 Malaysian General Election." I am not so naive as to think that all newspapers embrace the middle path. British newspapers like Times, Guardian and Daily Telegraph all lean towards one political party or another and such is also the case with dailies in USA, Singapore, Australia, you name it. But I am also reminded of how our some years ago our NST tried to influence voters by front paging a photo of Tengku Razaleigh wearing a Kadazan hat which was spun as him promoting Christianity! That was really scraping the barrel. So, there is a limit that must not be crossed! Oh for sure too, the STAR and NST are not going to file for bankruptcy from my cancelling my subscription to their publications. But, it's my and my wife's hard earned money. We've had enough of lies, lies and more lies. | |||||
| Do You Not Sense Stupidity At Its best? Posted: 04 Jul 2011 10:10 AM PDT Not a day is without a statement from an UMNO/BN leader condemning the intended Bersih rally as a real threat to national security. What threat to national security are they talking about when the rally is all about the expression and demands of the people's rights to free and fair elections? Even SUHAKAM deemed the rally as within the bounds of the people's rights. The legal fraternity echoes a similar view.
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