Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
- Opinion polls — Lim Sue Goan
- Rosmah at Altantuya murder 'implausible'
- ‘Strong potential for DAP in Dayak areas’
- Karpal: Mat Sabu must retract remarks
- WikiLeaks says passkeys to unredacted cables leaked
| Posted: 31 Aug 2011 05:42 PM PDT
Ibrahim Suffian, Merdeka Center (The Malaysian Insider) - Opinion polls have not been standardised in Malaysia and thus, the interpretation of their results depend on your stand and point of view. The approval rating of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak rose to 72 per cent in May 2010 and Barisan Nasional leaders interpreted it as the people's support to the Government Transformation Plan (GTP) and the New Economic Model (NEM), while the Pakatan Rakyat said that the poll was not credible. However, a recent Merdeka Center poll reported that the prime minister's approval rating has dipped to 59 per cent in August. This time, BN leaders said that it did not reflect the fact while the Pakatan Rakyat said that the people have shifted to support the alternative coalition. Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim also said that an Information Department survey of 50,000 respondents showed that most people accepted Najib's leadership and the BN government. When the prime minister received 72 per cent of approval rating, some scholars predicted that the general election would be held in the end of last year. Would today's situation delay the general election to next year? BN questioned the sampling of the Merdeka Center that interviewed only 1,027 voters. In my opinion, I think the scope of investigation was not comprehensive enough. For example, they should ask about the people's support for the Pakatan Rakyat and its leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to study the inadequacies of the ruling and alternative coalitions over the past three years. The August poll showed that two issues had affected the prime minister's approval rating, namely the Bersih 2.0 rally and the rising cost of living. The improper handling of the July 9 rally has been expected to cause a rebound and now, they could only take remedial actions, particularly to accelerate the reform of the electoral system to dilute the impact. As for the rising cost of living, even though it is a global issue, the government can still implement some measures to alleviate the people's burden. The 2012 Budget is the key and in addition to proposing positive strategies, they must also ensure a strict and successful execution. In fact, BN has been devoted to improving the economy over the past three years. Unfortunately, its stand is not firm enough. For example, the NEM requires a performance-based system to enhance competitiveness. But they have actually got back to the old quota system recently. It is one of the factors affecting the confidence of voters.
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| Rosmah at Altantuya murder 'implausible' Posted: 31 Aug 2011 05:24 PM PDT
(Malaysiakini) - The presence of Rosmah Mansor, wife of premier Najib Razak, at the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder appeared "implausible", according to a United States diplomat in a secret cable sent to Washington three years ago. The diplomatic cable was dispatched by the United States embassy in Kuala Lumpur two weeks after controversial blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin pledged in a statutory declaration that Rosmah was at the scene of the October 2006 murder of the Mongolian woman.
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| ‘Strong potential for DAP in Dayak areas’ Posted: 31 Aug 2011 04:10 PM PDT
Fractured Sarawak Barisan Nasional lacks focus to aid poor Dayak community. (Free Malaysia Today) - Sarawak's geopolitical landscape has much to offer DAP if it is prepared to genuinely embrace Dayaks into its fold, said a branch-level party leader. Expressing his view at a recent Dayak Reawakening seminar held here, Leon Jimat Donald said if handled correctly, DAP, which gave the Pakatan Rakyat coalition 12 seats in the April 16 state elections, could win many more constituencies in the polls to come. He said this was considering the fact that there are 28 state and 15 parliamentary seats which are predominantly Dayaks. "If we analyze the current geopolitical landscape of Sarawak, there is a lot of room for the DAP to grow. "But we see the need for DAP to embrace the Dayaks into its fold," said Donald who is Simanggang branch chairman. He was presenting a paper entitled 'DAP as a Dayak political platform' at the seminar which was organised by the Dayak Consultative Council. Said Donald: "There are currently 28 state and 15 parliamentary seats with Dayak majorities. "These include six state Bidayuh seats, 18 Iban,and four Orang Ulu state seats. For parliamentary seats Bidayuh have three, Iban's have 10 and two Orang Ulu seats. "There are 14 state and six parliamentary seats which are Chinese majority, and there are four mixed seats in which no particular race constitutes a majority. "But unfortunately there are no mixed parliamentary seats. In total, there are 47 state and 21 parliamentary seats which the Pakatan Rakyat has every chance of winning," he said. Dayak support for DAP Donald pointed out that the opposition coalition needed to win 36 seats in the state assembly to form the state government. He noted in his paper that in the recent state election, the opposition had made giant strides in the political landscape. DAP had nearly wiped out Sarawak United Peoples Party (SUPP) in the urban areas. They had also won some seats in mixed areas much to their surprise. Together with PKR, the Pakatan coalition now have 15 seats in the Sarawak state assembly.
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| Karpal: Mat Sabu must retract remarks Posted: 31 Aug 2011 04:07 PM PDT
To arrest a worsening situation, Mat Sabu must apologise for his remark on Bukit Kepong incident. DAP national chairman Karpal Singh today called on PAS deputy president Mohamad Sabu, who is better known as Mat Sabu, to retract his ill-adviced remarks on the Bukit Kepong incident that happened on Feb 23, 1950. Karpal said if Mat Sabu retracts his remark immediately, then he can arrest the negative political implications on Pakatan Rakyat from getting worse. Speaking at a press conference in Air Itam, Karpal said Mat Sabu's remarks, in which the PAS leader allegedly hailed the communist attackers as 'independent heroes', can be "very damaging" to Pakatan political prospects, especially with the general election around the corner. He said Mat Sabu's alleged remarks were also insensitive to the families of the victims. "Mat Sabu should retract immediately and maybe explain his remarks. "He should do it to assuage the feelings of families of those who perished in the attack. "On whether he wants to apologise or not, I will leave it to his good senses," said Karpal, the Bukit Gelugor MP during his constituency visit. Mat Sabu erred "In Bukit Kepong, the police were British policemen. Those who attacked Bukit Kepong were the true freedom fighters. Their leader was Muhammad Indera." Karpal also noted that the historical attack on the police station happened some seven years before Malaya gained independence from the colonial British administration. In the attack, the station was razed to the ground and 13 policemen, six Home Guards, three women and a child were killed. After the emergency was declared in 1948, he said the communist was involved in an armed conflict with the British administration. As a result, he said the Emergency Regulations 1948 was enacted at the height of communist insurgency and, the security forces all came under the British. He said the police personnel and Home Guards manning the police station had every right to repel the attack. "Therefore the attack on the police station must be viewed in its proper context," said Karpal.
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| WikiLeaks says passkeys to unredacted cables leaked Posted: 31 Aug 2011 04:04 PM PDT
(AFP) - The anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks on Thursday accused a journalist with the Guardian of leaking the passwords to a trove of unredacted US diplomatic cables, charges denied by the British newspaper. "A Guardian journalist has, in a previously undetected act of gross negligence or malice, and in violation of a signed security agreement with the Guardian's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, disclosed top secret decryption passwords to the entire, unredacted, WikiLeaks Cablegate archive," it said. "We have already spoken to the (US) State Department and commenced pre-litigation action. We will issue a formal statement in due course," WikiLeaks added, in a statement posted on Twitter. The Guardian, one of a handful of newspapers that began publishing redacted cables last year, said WikiLeaks shared the documents through a secure server for a period of hours before taking the server offline and removing the files. "But unknown to anyone at the Guardian, the same file with the same password was republished later on BitTorrent, a network typically used to distribute films and music," the newspaper reported. The Guardian went on to deny, in an official statement, allegations that the password had been released through its book, "WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy," published in February. "It's nonsense to suggest the Guardian's WikiLeaks book has compromised security in any way," the Guardian said. "Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours. "It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the database." The Guardian instead reported that a link to the full, unredacted database was published by an unnamed Twitter user who found it after acting on hints published in several media outlets and on WikiLeaks's Twitter feed. The security breach has led to the publication of the WikiLeaks archive of 251,000 diplomatic cables online, without redaction to protect sources who spoke to US diplomats on condition of anonymity, the Guardian said. Redacted cables released over the past nine months through agreements with the major newspapers and by WikiLeaks itself have revealed confidential diplomatic assessments and potentially embarrassing comments by world leaders. WikiLeaks has defended the release of the embassy cables -- as well as the previous release of leaked Iraq and Afghanistan war reports -- as the journalistic exposure of official deception. The United States, while refusing to confirm the authenticity of any of the documents, has accused WikiLeaks of putting individual lives and US national security at risk.
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It also said that the continued public attention to such allegations also could damage Najib's chances, who was then deputy prime minister, of replacing Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as the country's new leader. 
Raja Petra was eventually charged with defaming Rosmah, Norhayati and Abdul Aziz on July 17, 2008. 
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