Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
| Musa, Anwar and other politico-corporate development Posted: 08 Nov 2012 05:07 PM PST Sime Darby's Annual and Extraordinary General Meetings yesterday went well. Resolutions tabled for the EGM approved. Mainstream paper reported of Dato Bakke Salleh expressed intention not to accept the scheme. And Tun Musa Hitam did the gentleman thing to not seek re-election as Sime Darby Chairman. However, it has got nothing to do with our previous posting calling for him not to seek re-election. [Read here.] He had planned for it and told shareholders at the AGM. "I had intended to serve Sime Darby for three years from 2007. However, due to a number of reasons, that decision was delayed until now. I hand over the reins of this great company to the next generation of leaders. I do so with an easy heart." Here onward, let the issue lay. While it is easy for Musa, it is not getting easier for Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim. The court of appeal has ruled that Anwar will be required to appear in court as witness in the lawsuit by Hong Leong bank against shareholders of Aras Murni Corporation Berhad (AMCB). [Read our past postings: Opening of Anwar's Pandora Box and Security Risk of Hood Osman.] Actually, there is supposed to be a bigger revelation from the past to come and haunt him. Not this one. First thing first.  Why is PNB still keeping this dude, Hood Osman with a financial lawsuit up his neck? Isn't having a CEO with a lawsuit subjecting the company to risk? What's wrong with Tan Sri Hamad Kama Piah? Doesn't he read employment contracts that they must be free from bankruptcy? The least he could do is put Hood on gardening leave. Hamad better watch his steps. There are many unsavory rumours circulating with regard to the construction of the 100 floors Menara PNB. Rumours are saying the Menara PNB Project Office, if there is one yet, is beginning to be a de facto business arm of the Persatuan Anak Kelantan Malaysia. Does he think BN can win in Kelantan and it is time to dish out rewards?  Hood together with few others are sued by an old crony of Anwar Ibrahim, Tan Sri Quek Leng Chan's Hong Leong Bank with regards to an old loan given AMCB to takeover Kewangan Usaha bersatu (KUB). Deal and loan gone sour and Quek wants his money back. Perhaps, the far sighted Quek do not see any prospect with Anwar Ibrahim. Freedy Kevin highlighted in his blog here that: The Court of Appeal here on Wednesday allowed an appeal brought by a businessman to amend his statement of defence to include the involvement of opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as the person behind the RM445mil deal to acquire Arus Murni Corporation Bhd (AMCB), which was owned Kewangan Bersatu Bhd (KBB).The businessman dare to take up the loan because Anwar was involved. "When asked by his lawyer, D. Paramalingam, how the companies and individuals were related, Low said: "From what I know, they are all cronies of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim."Is this the man Pakatan Rakyat wants to lead this nation in the fight against corruption? Imagine, the people falling for the allegations he made on corruption but he himself is corrupt. Oooo ... let's wait for this court case first. The financial scandal on Anwar will involved billions! As far as we know, Tun Musa never had a history of corruption. Our concern is that he is a political animal. He cannot shed his habit as politician, his behaviour as politician and his manouvring like a politician. In the time to come, we cannot afford to go on like this. Prime Minister has already started making Board of Directors of IMDB comprise of professionals and no politicians.
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| Posted: 08 Nov 2012 03:48 PM PST At the World Halal Week held annually in Kuala Lumpur, you can purchase halal bone china, an exemplar of luxury and piety rolled into one. Malaysia is the leader in halal certification and a major promoter of the global halal industry. With markets saturated with a mind-boggling array of sharia-compliant goods that cater to a more discerning Muslim middle class, Islam can be seen as having entered more deeply into the lives of Malaysian Muslims in more commodified ways than ever before. The line between the sacred and the consumable profane have blurred, and true to the dictum that Islam is 'a way of life', anything which supports the notion of good Muslim personhood can now be made halal. The explosion of consumer goods imbued with spiritual meaning is a new phenomenon spurred on by the broadening middle classes disenchanted with meaningless consumerism. Now consumer goods can have real intrinsic, spiritual meaning. But how did everything beyond consumables (and indeed items beyond meat) become halal. Commodification of culture started as a phenomenon that emerged from the early capitalist period of Fordist mass production which then intensified during late capitalism. Flexible and geographically mobile post-Fordist market approaches shifted from mass production to a more fragmented, niche market to suit every possible types of lifestyle. The 'religious' lifestyle or public piety characterised by halal crockery, toothpaste, make-up, and even beer can be regarded an outcome of post-Fordist modes of production. Marx's concept of 'commodity fetish' may be the most relevant point of entry into understanding the commodification of objects and practices that were previously not considered commercial. In Marx's analysis, commodity fetish requires the concealment of the origins and processes involved in the production of a consumer product from the consumer in order to maintain the 'religious fog' that justifies the mystery of its self-evident value. Religious symbols and meaning as commodity fetish may behave in the same manner, in that the deeper engagement of the purpose and context of a particular symbol are sidestepped and usurped by other distracting elements that vie for the attention of the consumer. The self-evident value of a religious commodity is intrinsically located within itself rather than the processes that lead to its points of 'origin'. The abstraction of all other factors involved in the production of a commodity has profound consequences on not just our relationship with literal consumer products but also with symbols, religious or otherwise. The post-Fordist condition demands the proliferation of diversity and thrives on the specialisation of products (and labour). Driven by the perpetuated need for 'new' and 'ever more novel-seeming goods', styles and signifiers are extracted from their previous associations and fused together to produce new products in what Jameson calls 'pastiche' for new consumers in new contexts. The ease with which such meaning and symbols are removed from their original contexts may point to their increasingly depthless, untethered, and frictionless qualities. Investigations into religious commodification have challenged theories of secularisation in modern society demonstrating that far from a wholesale decline in public belief in God and church membership, modern and rational societies, in particular those in Asia and the United States, continue to embrace religion and imbue public life with notions of religious essence. The rise of religious commodification has been argued to go hand in hand with the emergence of 'Islamic modernity', a political and cultural sensibility whereby modernity is embraced alongside a commitment to Islam as part of the project of modernity in its own terms as much as its approximations to western notions of modernity. The concept of 'Islamic modernity' have a Lyotardian suspicion against the grand narrative of western modernity in favour of a more hybrid and reflexive modernity inflected with faith-based sensibilities where non-western contexts experience the rise of advanced economies and public cultures. The Islamic modern can be located in the popular consumption of Islamic media and Islamic forms of consumerism that at times exist, not without friction, alongside orthodox Islamic beliefs and practices.
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