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Religion is something personal
Remembering the 2007 Bersih rally
The Peninsula is the real battleground
Entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia

Posted: 09 Nov 2012 01:43 PM PST

It has taken a rookie politician to put across get the message that no one has the right to play God.

Jeswan Kaur, FMT

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters. – Issac Bashevis Singer, author and Nobel Prize laureate

The antipathy being shown to Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar for her candid and forthright view that everyone is deserving of religious freedom, including the Malays, reveals the feared truth that religion is a personal choice and coercion simply does not work.

The truth is Nurul Izzah has done the Malays especially a favour through her remark that religious freedom should be accorded to everyone.

It is a different matter that her comments made in a forum entitled "Islamic state? Which vision? Whose responsibility" on Nov 3 came down with a 'Richter Scale'-like backlash.

The statements coming from the Prime Minister's Department were typical. Minister Jamil Khir Baharom said Nurul Izzah's remark was "misleading" and "dangerous". His deputy, Mashitah Ibrahim, went further, calling for the young politician's prosecution on the charge of insulting Islam.

How could any thinking person conclude that she was insulting Islam when the gist of her remark was her quotation of the Quranic verse that prohibits believers from compelling people to accept Islam?

Mashitah even hinted that Nurul Izzah was encouraging apostasy, a claim which the PKR vice-president begged to differ.

A pertinent question

It appears that there are many in this country that are unwilling to tolerate such ingenuous view of a 'green' politician and that too one who is the daughter of Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim.

Granted that it was anomalous for Nurul Izzah to so bravely touch on a topic so sensitive in this country, Islam; sadly, unlike her, the minds of her fellow colleagues, especially in the Barisan Nasional camp, have yet to 'attain' maturity.

Thinking out of the box or daring to make a paradigm shift has never been BN's interest nor strength, hence its 'condemn and ridicule' approach in dealing with anything its nemesis, the Pakatan Rakyat pact does or says.

Nurul Izzah has posed a very pertinent question, one that forces everyone to ruminate and ask questions in order to penetrate to the essence of any religion. Most people who have even a rough understanding of Islam will agree that asking questions is not a sin in that religion.

The outstanding problem in this country, however, is that one is given the impression that anything bearing upon the country's official religion and Malay rights and privileges is not to be questioned.

Still, in light of all this, Nurul Izzah dared to state what she believed to be true. She certainly was not trying to ingratiate herself with anyone by speaking her mind.

As it stands, the country's constitution says if you are a Malay then you are automatically a Muslim. It is given that the Malays will not go against the constitution, not when it comes to religion.

But then what happens if a Malay individual wanst to denounce his religion? These are serious questions that need genuine answers, not rebuke and punishment.

Why is there the fear of addressing of even acknowledging the fact that there are some Malays who are unhappy with their religion?

READ MORE HERE

Remembering the 2007 Bersih rally

Posted: 09 Nov 2012 01:37 PM PST

Five years after the historic first Bersih rally on Nov 10, 2007, EC's shenanigans and electoral fraud still continue to haunt us.

Selena Tay, FMT

Five years ago, exactly on a Saturday on Nov 10, scenes of the first Bersih rally took to the streets in Kuala Lumpur. The most famous scene was the one featuring the FRU (Federal Reserve Unit) truck firing the water cannon beneath the STAR-LRT line to Sri Petaling.

The crowd then was estimated to be around 30,000 to 40,000. Who at that time would have thought that there would be two more Bersih rallies to follow?

Be that as it may, that historic day on Nov 10 woke up some Malaysian voters just in time for the general election held on March 8, 2008 where for the first time in history BN lost their two-thirds majority and five states in the Peninsular although one of the states gained by the opposition, Perak, was subsequently recaptured by BN.

Still, from Nov 10 five years ago till to-date, things have hardly changed but instead have become worst as the electoral roll is now much dirtier despite the Parliamentary Select Committee being set up.

The BN government has also requested for an allocation of RM400 million to run the 13th general election whereas in the previous general election the allocation was RM203 million.

Opposition Leader and Permatang Pauh MP, Anwar Ibrahim has questioned the high allocation and also highlighted the issue of phantom voters in the ongoing Parliament sitting.

According to Anwar, those voters without application date (to be a voter) came up to 4,700 detected cases while 367 voters were granted approval to be inserted into the electoral roll even before they were born!

Anwar gave the example of a phantom voter with an identity card number of 7908 from Parit Buntar, Perak who was born on Aug 23, 1979 but applied to be a voter on Jan 15, 1950.

"This is a great record of a real phantom voter," said Anwar in Parliament.

He also said there were 282 voters who were given voting rights on their date of birth for example one Nur Khalida of Serdang who was born on Oct 26, 1982 and the application to be a voter was made on the same day itself.

There is also the case of one Mohd Najib of Temerloh, Pahang who was born on Aug 18, 1979 and given his voting right on May 16, 1991, just three months short of his 12th birthday.

Approvals for voting rights given to secondary school students came up to 1,049 detected cases while approvals for those between age 17 to 20 totalled 12,000 detected cases and those between age 20 but less than 21 years of age came up to 186,000 detected cases.

Anwar also gave the example of a teenage voter named Rusiati of Kinabatangan in Sabah who was born on Feb 19, 1978 and became a voter on Nov 27, 1992 at the age of 14.

EC's shenanigans

PAS MP, Dr. Mohd Hayati Othman for Pendang, Kedah complained that the Election Commission (EC) was slow to act when it comes to rectifying errors and only took action after being threatened with police reports.

He brought up the case of Zakaria Daud, a male voter transformed into a female named Rafzah Muhammad Nasib although the identity card number ended with 5589 (odd number for males). The address on this voter's MyKad is in Pendang, Kedah but he/she has been transferred to Kelana Jaya in Selangor.

The PAS MP voiced his anger that not only has the voter been transformed but also transfered without his/her knowledge.

READ MORE HERE

The Peninsula is the real battleground

Posted: 09 Nov 2012 11:03 AM PST

Umno/BN's legitimacy to command the support of East Malaysian, including Sabah Umno, hinges on BN winning the majority of Peninsula parliamentarians.

Dr Wong Chin Huat

The real battleground for the ruling and opposition coalitions in this coming general election may not be Sabah and Sarawak, but Peninsular Malaysia.

The ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) parliamentarians concede the possibility of losing six and seven parliamentary seats respectively. That would mean only losing 13 out of a total of 57 seats in the entire East Malaysia.

And if the opposition coalition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) counts on these 13 seats to constitute a simple majority of 112 seats in the Federal Parliament, the opposition coalition would need to win 99 out of 165 seats or about 60% in the Peninsula.

That would be an uphill task for the four-year-old opposition coalition, which won only 80 seats in the Peninsula and has kept only 73 seats after a series of defections.

Going by this line of calculation, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim — who heads Pakatan — can bid farewell to his Putrajaya dream, unless he can orchestrate an exodus of BN key leaders like how he recently enticed a Muslim and a Christian parliamentarian to join his camp.

Alternatively, the current leaders of Sabah PR need to win more than six parliamentary seats in the coming election.

This may not be easy given the likelihood that PR would have to face multi-corners, with local Sabah opposition parties led by popular leaders like Jeffery Kitinggan and Yong Teck Li playing the third force.

As a matter of fact, the failure of the opposition to work out a straight fight against BN may offset the benefit it may reap from infighting within Sabah BN.

In other words, the growing under-currents against the scandal-tainted Chief Minister Datuk Musa Aman may be a missed opportunity for Anwar's dream.

Key point

The analysis so far has however missed out a key point: Umno/BN's legitimacy to command the support of East Malaysian, including Sabah Umno, hinges on BN winning the majority of Peninsula parliamentarians.

In the 2008 elections, BN in fact lost the simple majority in popular votes by a small margin. It led PR with a 85:80 margin only because of the first-past-the-post electoral system.

The moment PR wins 83 seats — the simple majority in the Peninsula — the entire game would change.

The price for Umno to command the support of East Malaysian MPs would immediately soar. Loyalty will then require much better offers than what the politicians get now.

And Umno may simply cannot afford to beat the PR offer.

To begin with, the non-Muslims in East Malaysia have a general distrust for Umno. Non-Muslim BN parties contest as many as 29 seats there.

To make the matter worse, not only Umno Sabah and PBB of Sarawak have a number of non-Muslim parliamentarians, even some Muslim politicians are not happy with the Peninsular-dominance embodied in Umno.

Main battleground

This means the real battleground to keep Sabah and Sarawak is in the Peninsula or West Malaysia.

Contrary to a common view, the battleground will not be in the Malay voters even though they make up the majority in 114 federal constituencies in West Malaysia, based on the electoral roll gazetted in June 2011.

The balance will instead be decided by the Chinese voters, who have shown the most uniformly voting pattern of all ethnic groups so far.

Government intelligence now puts the base line of Chinese support for the BN at 20%, whereas in the past the floor was 30%.

Now, if the Chinese support for PR across the board is indeed 80%, then for PR to win the 83 constituencies with the highest proportion of Chinese voters — with Jempol (26.72%) being the 83rd — it needs only 39.06% of support from the non-Chinese: Malay, Indian and others.

In reality, the minimum of non-Chinese support that PR needs in constituencies with a substantial Chinese minority is much lower.

In 2008, PAS and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) from PR won 15 seats with less than 26.27% Chinese voters in the more than 55% of popular votes.

This means PR should be able to retain these Malay-majority constituencies based on Malay votes, even when there is a general swing of 5% towards the BN.

And it needs only 68 more seats to pass the magical threshold of 83.

By the same calculation, PR will need to win the 68 constituencies with the highest percentage of Chinese voters, which ends with Sembrong (33.30%). And the minimum non-Chinese support it needs will be as low as only 35%.

This explains why MCA is working so hard now to highlight on the fear of Islamisation and ethnic riot. A few percent more Chinese voters staying at home or going away would be enough to save the BN.

In 1999, MCA women campaigners contributed greatly to the BN's victory amidst the Reformasi wave by reminding other home makers to stock up food supply because elections were around the corner.

Now, a group of Chinese homemakers calling themselves Mama Bersih is going to every yellow and green rally to advocate for political awakening. Their motivation? They want their children to grow up in a safe and free country.

It is a different kind of fear that defines the future of Malaysia.

This is how much this country has changed in 13 years, whether or not the politicians have.

Dr Wong Chin Huat is a political scientist and former lecturer of Monash University (Malaysia campus).

Entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia

Posted: 09 Nov 2012 10:53 AM PST

Careful with the green shoots.

Starting your own business may not end you up a datuk

The reality is that most new businesses employ existing technologies and create no new technologies at all. Although so much entrepreneurship literature focuses on high-tech start-ups, these types of firms are only a very small percentage of new firm start-ups.

Are Asian policymakers fooled by the hype that entrepreneur development creates economic growth?

Murray Hunter, Asia Sentinel

Throughout Southeast Asia, attempts by governments to promote the creation of entrepreneurs have almost unquestionably been regarded as a policy instrument for promoting economic growth. But reality doesn't support the image. Creating new entrepreneurs may actually be dampening economic growth, a far sight from the creative economies many governments aspire to develop.

The data in most developing Southeast Asian countries just doesn't seem to support this. The truth of the matter may be very different. While lightning strikes people figuratively about as often as it strikes literally, entrepreneurship can be more aptly described as a narrative about survival and subsistence than growth and glory. Are Asian policymakers fooled by the hype that entrepreneur development creates economic growth?

Entrepreneurship: Open a Kedai Kopi
On the ground across Southeast Asia, very little innovation can actually be seen. The majority of new SMEs do not create any new innovation and as a consequence do not contribute to economic growth. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), a body founded by Babson College and the London Business School, has found that the majority of new enterprise start-ups occur within the service and retail industries.

It appears that very few people actually formally scan the environment for opportunities. If people did, they would not start up in industries with high competition and low profit margins, as the majority do. In fact most people have a natural inclination to imitate others, employing no innovation whatsoever – witness for instance entire streets made up of shops selling exactly the same things side by side, an odd phenomenon in Asian cities. Witness any beach in Asia where an entrepreneur opens a string of tourist huts, only to see a half-dozen just like it sprout up, driving down the price for beachgoers and cluttering the landscape.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Thailand Executive Report indicates that most such ventures are small and focus on the consumer service sector in retailing, restaurants, and personal services, such as health and beauty services. As with the rest of the region, these businesses are the prime source of income of most entrepreneurs and operated for the purpose of earning a living. Local entrepreneurs select an activity that is very locally oriented, suggesting that they are opportunistic in the limited sense of the word. There is little, if any value created.

Few Rocket Scientists
The reality is that most new businesses employ existing technologies and create no new technologies at all. Although so much entrepreneurship literature focuses on high-tech start-ups, these types of firms are only a very small percentage of new firm start-ups.

Entrepreneurship creates less employment than many people think. From data provided by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2011 Global Report it can be seen that less than 2 percent of firms in most countries expect to provide more than 20 jobs, about the same percentage 5–19 jobs, with the overwhelming majority of firms expecting to employ between 0–4 people. This is strongly supported by SME data in Malaysia where almost 80 percent of firms in the country are self employed micro-enterprises, employing no one outside the family. An additional 19 percent of existing enterprises employ less than 4 persons per enterprise, indicating the SMEs actually contribute little to the growth in employment.

According to another piece of research most entrepreneur incomes are lower than what they would earn working for someone else, with less benefits, and longer hours of work. This is logical given that most entrepreneurial ventures enter into highly fragmented, localized markets, with no source of competitive advantage.

Not only is the average entrepreneur earning less than his or her salaried counterparts, income is spasmodic, varying from day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year. There is a good chance that a person and his or her family will drop down into a lower socioeconomic group during their tenure as an entrepreneur. In the region many owner operator firms are seen as part of the marginal or informal economy.

There is also little chance that an entrepreneur will be able to sell his or her business and make any substantial capital gain. Therefore many Southeast Asian countries over the next few years will face the problem of how to support elderly populations with little means to survive. On the whole, starting a business will make a person and their family relatively worse off than if they were working for someone else.

Kredit: www.malaysia-today.net

Sabtu, 10 November 2012

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

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