Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

MARA, the property pushover
Wee steals DAP secular theme, but MCA silent
Holding Out for a Hero: the Saddening State of the Sabah Opposition Front

Posted: 21 Oct 2012 03:50 PM PDT

MARA is a purpose-incorporated Federal Government agency by a Parliament act to assist the development of Malays. It has been successful in many ways, especially education.

For instance, 54 MARA Junior Science Colleges (MRSM) have been built and tens of thousands of Malays benefited in the various tertiary level financing programs, local and abroad. This and it's scholarship program have become feeder of Malay professionals to industries and institutions.

Unfortunately, as the interepretation say, MARA has been an organization where so many individuals took advantage of and made it a push-over. MARA has and is acquiring properties and assets that it should not have interests in the first place and should not be in business.

Kelab Rahman Putra, Sg Buloh Selangor

One of the notorious case is the MARA acquisition into the Bukit Rahman Putra property development project in the late '80s, when Mohd. Tamrin Ghafar was the Chairman.

MARA paid over RM 70,000.00 per golf membership where 260 golf membership of Kelab Golf Rahman Putra was transferred to MARA and acquired 100 acres from the 760 acres development.

Ashley Hotel, London

Then the acquisition of 53 room Ashley Hotel near Paddington Station, London by MARA Inc. two years ago.

Why MARA goes into the hotel business and in London is baffling many.

MARA has neither the expertise in the inn business nor understands anything remotely about property in London. In the first place, they never did were into the inn business in Malaysia.

746 Swanston Steet, Melbourne

The most recent is MARA Council's approval to dish out RM140 million of soft loan to MARA Inc. to acquire an accommodation building in the neighbourhood of Carlton, Melbourne, Victoria.

MARA Inc. is supposed to acquire 746 Swanston Street, Carlton, Melbourne VIC 3053, Australia. Currently, the building lease twin-sharing or single rooms at the rate of AUD 160 and AUD 210 per week, respectively.

Why MARA is doing this especially when the sponsorship program for students to Australia has been reduced drastically?

If the acquisition of this property is for the benefit of MARA sponsored students in Australia, then the next question shall be how many students do MARA sponsor to study in Australia annually.

Wouldn't these sponsored students attend universities all over New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia too?

The fact that 746 Swanston St. is a building where there is 313 beds. Unless MARA intend to have about 100 sponsored students to Melbourne University and RMIT annually, the acquisition of the accommodation building is about making money from a market where MARA Inc. has little understanding about.

RM 140 million for a property investment abroad by a wholly own company of a Federal Government socio-economic development agency is definitely mind boggling.

MARA should be looking into acquiring high street commercial spaces and develop the Bumiputra retail opportunities first instead of looking at and acquiring properties abroad.

Posted: 21 Oct 2012 02:01 PM PDT

Wee Ka Siong, the MCA's Youth leader, has stolen the DAP's theme of secularism in political administration, by coming out strongly against theocracy in an Islamic state, which he said would plunge Malaysia into the Dark Ages.

Secularism was one of 16 resolutions adopted by MCA Youth on Friday — but the senior party remained silent about an Islamic state or even about its hudud, Islamic criminal punishment, about which party leaders had made many critical statements.

On Friday, the MCA Youth adopted the following as Resolution No 3:

 Mempertahankan sepenuhnya sistem pentadbiran sekular negara kita yang  berteraskan Perlembagaan Persekutuan serta menolak sebarang bentuk  pentadbiran ektremis agama dan hukum hudud.
 MCA YOUTH 

But on Sunday, the 16 MCA resolutions were completely silent about secularism, Islamic state or hudud. Two of its three political resolutions condemned Pakatan Rakyat and particularly the DAP for supposedly misleading the Chinese community about PAS and hudud. But of secularism, Islamic state and hudud itself there was not a word.

Attacks on the Islamic state policy and on hudud criminal law punishment featured heavily in speeches at the MCA general assembly and in news coverage at the weekend, as the party made a strong attempt at reviving itself.

The MCA has been hamstrung after suffering devastating losses at the hands of the DAP in the general election of 2008 and through its power struggles in the enforced resignation of Chua Soi Lek, a coup against his successor Ong Tee Keat, and Soi Lek's subsequent return.

"
We must remember that the democracy and human rights which we are fighting for today is the result of the separation of politics and religion. We must not allow PAS to return us to an age that has long past us. This ideology must be rejected by the people of this country.

However, the mindset of PAS leadership remains in the dark ages and now they are trying to force our country to return to the very days that all other countries have fought hard to leave behind.
WEE KA SIONG
at MCA Youth assembly

Ka Siong spoke of how Europe had overthrown Christian theocratic rule in the 14th Century, and developed secularism in politics by separating church and state, which, together with democratic practices had led to the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution in Europe, spreading to the world and creating present-day prosperity.

Wee's statement against theocratic rule and for secular democracy was clear and forthright. But it was not matched by the senior party whose leaders merely used hudud as a stick with which to beat the DAP and Pakatan Rakyat.

Even its back against the wall, the MCA seemed unwilling to commit itself at a policy level, leaving it to the junior wing to mention the unmentionable.

The DAP has often capitalised in the past on the MCA's relative silence and ineffectiveness against the creeping Islamisation of Malaysian public policy and administration. MCA leaders often stated that worked quietly behind the scenes as a partner of Umno.

Holding Out for a Hero: the Saddening State of the Sabah Opposition Front

Posted: 21 Oct 2012 01:56 PM PDT

Sabah opposition is, for all practical purposes, a collection of four main parties, DAP, PKR, Sabah Star and SAPP including newly formed but not registered Angkatan Perubahan Sabah (APS) headed by Wilfred Bumburing and Pakatan Perubahan Sabah (PPS) headed by Lajim Okin. USNO Baru is also in the fray mobilising support using founder Tun Mustapha's name, but, its yet to be registered and very unlikely that it ever will.

There is a remark attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to Dr Jeffrey Kitingan to the effect that most Sabah politics is mathematics, a number game. As political analysis goes, this remark proves insightful. Sabah politics is, in this view, not driven by ideology or charisma. It is constituted by the mundane activity of stitching together narrow interest-driven coalitions. And electoral fortunes, for the most part, do not turn on massive changes induced by immense persuasiveness of candidates. They turn on small swings, and contingent management of interests.

But if this political analysis is taken too literally, it can become spectacularly self-defeating. It can make politics a passive waiting game. As opposition parties in Sabah prepare to met and strategise, or assuming they ever will, a plan to commit to one-to-one fights against the Barisan National in the coming 13th General Elections brews.

Pakatan Rakyat in Sabah headed by Anwar Ibrahim has little presence here but it has done well in other PKR states from 2008. Since the last election, it has not expanded its presence in Sabah although the DAP has its footing in the urban areas.

Lest we forget, elections are ultimately about the ability to project credibility.

On the economy, the Pakatan Rakyat states have done well so far. It has given an alternative to old-fashioned UMNO/BN politics, concocting better versions to solutions. In Parliament sessions it had the rulling coalition on the mat for the many economic mess-ups in the last four years.

The most polished personalities in the Sabah opposition scene, Dr Jeffrey Kitingan and Yong Teck Lee, don't seem to show that they have what it takes to run the state economy like the way Musa Aman has, but has only seem to be harping on the Sabah Rights vis a vis the Malaysia Agreement 1963. They are also simply waiting for the Barisan National Sabah to make more errors to give them a lift. To make matters worse, internally, the Sabah opposition itself is faced with a series of simultaneous equations it cannot solve. The main one is of course the mistrust between Malaya based Pakatan Rakyat and Borneo based Star Sabah and SAPP.

Most commentators assume that the Sabah opposition's central dilemma is between Sabah Rights and a more centrist position. But, arguably, this is not its biggest dilemma. It will never be able to persuade die-hard antagonists who think that Sabah joining the Federation in 1963 to form Malaysia is a mistake. Regrettable as it might be, it can probably get away with a game of calculated ambiguity, so long as it is not deeply polarising. Its central dilemma is that Malaya does not understand what federalism means for Sabah politics.

If politics has become genuinely federal, then there are implications for how political parties are organised. In an ideal situation, like what we see now in the Musa Aman Government, state-level leaders and units have to believe that there is a symbiotic relationship between them and the leadership in Putrajaya. Association with the Putrajaya leadership enhances the prospects of local units and that's why we see so much positivity coming from the Musa Aman government today. But if the Putrajaya leadership does not significantly add to the state units' prospects, or worse still, becomes a liability ( like during the PBS days) then the central high command has little authority over the state. On the other hand, a party composed entirely of state units can have no coherence at the centre, and cannot project itself as a national party, like in Sarawak. This is the basic structural dilemma faced by the Sabah opposition.

It is, for all practical purposes, a collection of four parties; DAP and PKR, (Malaya based), Sabah Star and SAPP (Borneo based). Except for Jeffrey Kitingan and Yong Teck Lee who can be considered local leaders, PKR and DAP does not have anyone except Anwar Ibrahim who isn't local himself. So the question of who is going to lead the Sabah opposition becomes an issue. To complicate matters, PKR in Sabah is undergoing a leadership crisis. Anwar and his cronies have meddled and presented Azmin Ali, also an outsider, as a solution to a headless PKR in Sabah. Clearly, the Sabah opposition's problem is that it has no charismatic local leader of any kind to take reign, althogether failing to see that the the average age of its cadres does not reflect new Sabah.

Kredit: www.malaysia-today.net

Isnin, 22 Oktober 2012

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

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