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Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

GE13: The good, the bad and the ugly
For politicians, it’s only about power
Dilemma of rural Sarawakians
Indians suffered 56 years of internal colonisation!
The new front-line states in GE13
How the tide has changed in Kluang
Ansari tests PKR's sincerity
Fraud in Malaysian politics never-ending
Mere ‘fraud’ not consideration in 13th GE

Posted: 12 Apr 2013 02:53 PM PDT

Malaysia is probably living one of its most exciting times, with delayed polls, never before seen handouts and an opposition strangulating the regime to its last breath.

Ali Cordoba, FMT

Malaysia's upcoming general election on May 5 seems to be scripted from the Hollywood western, 'The Good, The Bad and the Ugly' but there is a surprise on the timeline.

The battle to govern the nation is pitting Pakatan Rakyat leader, Anwar Ibrahim, who is living the greatest political revival in Malaysia's history, against a regime that has probably overspent its days in power.

The irony of the parallel to the United States is that the ruling Barisan National is run by an old guard, shadowing a younger generation with similarities to the Republican Party.

The BN, with Umno at the helm, headed by Najib Tun Razak, is intricately mired in the gripping embrace of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.

The behind the scenes politics and the power deals that form part of the BN's litany of errors have in a sense contributed in catapulting the opposition to greater heights.

Mahathir, fighting for his legacy and for the new Malays he helped create, is putting Umno into jeopardy, forcing it to embark on a suicidal mission to defy the people and maintain the status-quo.

The bunch of old men, gunslingers of the past, have laid down the rules for Umno and BN in the wake of the GE13 and it is with their dusty intentions that the ruling coalition is going into the battle against Pakatan, re-branding the old tune into a new ring tone.

Again behind the scenes, is Daim Zainuddin and to a lesser extent Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, clamouring for BN to remain in power while the people seem to understand they are struggling to keep alive their own legacies.

The legacy of the Mahathir era is rigged with incidents and events that have marred the country for good, including the 'Malaysia Boleh' slogan, the Memali incident, the al-Maunah episode and the reformasi era.

Mahathir is not opposing Anwar to secure the memories left behind by the street battles of the reformasi crowd seeking change in the country, but he is batting for the total recall of such vivid memories.

And by recall, it clearly means the erasing of the history of the reformasi movement with the elder statesman calling for Anwar to be burried in GE13.

The sinking ship

Mahathir and men of his ilk are defending their legacies of ISA arrests, the beating of Anwar in jail and of his supporters in the streets, the fallacies of the Sodomy 1 and 2 saga and cronies eating up the wealth of the country are the uglier ones in Malaysia's political arena.

Then came the Najib Tun Razak era, tainted with the Scorpene scandal and the Altantunya Shaariibuu affair, with a government that did everything to become the copycat of the policies formulated by the opposition.

Najib will be remembered for the lackluster BN in power, shackled by Anwar's exuberance and his forceful character whom they could not eliminate despite the plethora of ugly sex videos.

READ MORE HERE

For politicians, it’s only about power

Posted: 11 Apr 2013 03:04 PM PDT

The politicians forget that it is us, the rakyat, who decide on their fate. It is us who decide if we want them to govern us.

CT Ali, FMT

I read that a blogger (I am sorry but I cannot bring myself to utter or write his name!) is going to stand as an independent against Anwar Ibrahim in Permatang Pauh.

What does he think this 13th general election is going to be? His road to glory, fame and wealth?

Do wannabe politicians no longer measure their ability to succeed in the electorate that they intend to contest by their ability to serve the rakyat? By their ability to present themselves as candidates deserving of the rakyat votes? Are elections a joke now?

And why does he want to contest?

Not to better the people's lot! Not to serve his electorate! No! He wants "to expose more alleged sex videos during the campaigning period".

How insulting is this to the constituency that he will contest in? Does he think that they would prefer sex tapes to food on their table? Is that now what budding politicians should strive to do?

How do Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat choose their candidates? Winnability, they say. The electorate be dammed!

What matters is winning the election. And if this is the public façade that these politicians willingly allow us to see, imagine what they will do within the four walls of their political enclave in order to ensure that they do win.

Do you not worry at the things they will do, the intrigues they will indulge in and how "winning" will excuse any act, however foul as long as it will ensure "winning"? What madness is this?

How are we to choose our representative that we send to Parliament to represent us? How do these candidates translate "winnibility" into votes for themselves and for the party that closes all eyes to anything else but the getting of political power?

It would seem that both BN and Pakatan are now seriously descending into an orgy of handing out cash through BRIM or any other plausible avenues in the name of helping the rakyat.

There are promises of cheaper petrol, cars, promises of more gutter politics, promises of burying each other in god knows what.

Anything but nation building. Anything else but the common good of our people and our nation.

Anything else but decent, open, responsible and good governance.

Winning at any costs

Look at the Malaysia we have today: a blogger could even think of challenging the leader of the opposition because he thinks that the "sex tapes" he has is reason enough for him to do so.

A national debt of over RM502 billion and still this BN government keeps making beggars of its own people because it keeps giving out cash handouts.

And a Pakatan opposition that now joins this irresponsible BN government in the race to give out more to the people.

READ MORE HERE

Dilemma of rural Sarawakians

Posted: 11 Apr 2013 01:26 PM PDT

I thought that when the state government started intensive logging more than 40 years ago, the state government's plan was to bring development into rural Sarawak and hence transform the life of the rural folk for the better. Wasn't the logging industry meant to act as a catalyst to better the life of rural Sarawakians?

Stephen Then, The Star

"ATAP masih bocor, minta perintah bikin baru". (The roofing is still leaking, am asking the government to do repair work).

That was the candid requests by many of the Iban folk I spoke to at Rumah Ngumbang, a settlement of 300 people located deep in ulu Teru sub-district, about 150km inland from Miri, when Baram incumbent MP Datuk Jacob Dungau Sagan went to visit them last weekend.

Men and women folk with handwritten letters in their hands, lined up to present Sagan with their needs, each of them appealing for financial help to repair their "bilik" in the 50-door longhouse.

I would have thought that such problems like leaking roofs, rotting verandahs and rickety ladders and walkways, muddy footpaths, leaking toilets, cracked walls and holes in the ceilings would have been overcome long ago.

After all, more than two years ago, the Federal Government had announced allocations of massive financial grants to urgently repair dilapidated longhouses of those living in interior Sarawak and Sabah.

I remember many national and state leaders visiting rural communities and telling them that their longhouses would be repaired with grants from the Rural and Regional Development Ministry.

Each longhouse would be getting up to RM100,000, depending on their needs and population size.

Apparently, there are still many areas where these repair works have not been accomplished.

No wonder in places like the Baram parliamentary constituency, longhouse folk are still deprived of the very basic.

Rumah Ngumbang, like so many other longhouses throughout Sarawak, still does not have treated water supply.

Last Saturday, Sagan and officials from the Rural and Regional Development Ministry launched a waterfiltration project in Rumah Ngumbang.

The folk there, will at least from now on, have access to clean and safe water to drink.

The question that has been bothering me is why is it that development of such very basic amenities have come so late for the rural folk of interior Sarawak.

Every one of the remote settlement that I have visited, from the ones in Baram in northern Sarawak to those in ulu Belaga in central Sarawak and Sri Aman in southern Sarawak, still seems to be plagued by infrastructural and amenity woes of all sorts.

After 50 years of independence through the formation of Malaysia, our rural Sarawakian brothers and sisters are still suffering from hardship caused by the lack of these very basic amenities.

Today, the state government leaders are talking about constructing 12 new dams in the remote areas to spur economic development.

State leaders have been aggressively drumming this message across. Even here in interior Baram, the state government's latest dam plan is to construct a RM4bil dam in Long Kesseh.

The leaders of the state administration are saying that there is a need to build these new dams so as to open up these interior regions to create jobs, new townships, new roads, schools, clinics, new business opportunities for a new life for the rural poor.

Wasn't the logging industry meant to act as a catalyst to better the life of rural Sarawakians?

Why was that objective not achieved? It would seem that the only ones benefiting from the logging industry in Sarawak are the big companies, not the local natives from whose land the timber logs were extracted.

After the logging came the oil palm industry.

Hundreds of thousands of hectares of land that had been logged and cleared of their valuable timber, are now planted with oil palm trees.

During my helicopter ride to ulu Teru from Miri Airport, I looked out from both sides of the windows and saw endless stretches of oil palm estates, both newly cleared and old ones.

These oil palm estates extended as far as the eye can see. Were not these oil palm schemes meant to improve the life of the rural poor?

Why was it then that the rural Sarawakians are still so deprived of the very basic when there are thousands of acres of oil palm estates surrounding their settlements?

Are the oil palm firms the only ones benefiting big-time from the palm oil yields on these interior native land?

There are of course some longhouse folk getting dividends from taking part in jointventures with the oil palm firms but it would seem that these dividends had not come in such great amount that were enough to revolutionise the rural communities.

Has something gone very wrong with all the development plans that the state government had put in place for the rural folk that had resulted in our rural people being still left so far behind in terms of social and economic progress?

During the dialogue organised by Sagan at Rumah Ngumbang, longhouse chiefs and elders from about a dozen settlements came. Almost all of them spoke about the need for the very basic amenities. My heart goes out to these folk.

I believe that what is happening now is that plans devised to develop rural Sarawak have become lost in implementation.

I hope the next government to be formed after the 13th general election will carry out a thorough review of the development masterplan for rural Sarawak.

Indians suffered 56 years of internal colonisation!

Posted: 10 Apr 2013 02:01 PM PDT

It's the PR which needs Indian votes, not the BN.

Joe Fernandez

The departure of the British administrators from Malaya in 1957, ostensibly giving independence to the country, meant nothing to the Indian Nation.

Indians soon found that they had exchanged one colonial master for another, from the British to the Malay-speaking communities drawn from the Bugis, Javanese, Minang, Acehnese, Arab Muslims and Indian Muslims, among others. This was the Malay Nation, a people without territory in Singapore, Malaya, south Thailand, Sri Lanka, Madagascar and South Africa.

From the scourge of external colonisation, Indians have been experiencing internal colonisation since 1957, a crime under international law. Incidentally, it was internal colonisation by Khartoum which eventually led to South Sudan breaking away from Sudan with the blessing of the UN Security Council.

On that score alone, internal colonisation, Umno/BN is the sworn eternal and mortal enemies of the Indian Nation in Malaysia. It's neither possible to forgive nor forget what Umno/BN has done to the Indians.

It's not possible for Indians to do business, purely on moral grounds, with this evil coalition which has squatted on Indians more than half a century.

Indians must seize the moral high ground and reject Umno/BN completely

The last General Election, the 12th, was a watershed for Indians when the makkal sakthi – people power in Tamil – wave generated by Hindraf Makkal Sakthi unleashed a political tsunami and installed Opposition Governments, formed by the Pakatan Rakyat (PR), in five states in Malaya and handed it Kuala Lumpur.

Alas, PR did little to roll back the policies institutionalized by 56 years of internal colonisation under Umno and its running dogs, the Barisan Nasional (BN). Neither is the Opposition making any attempts this time to woo the Indians despite 85 per cent of them voting against the BN in 2008. PR belabours under the delusion that Indians would automatically vote for them, having broken with BN the last time.

This 13th GE, Indians are in a league all by themselves, having not even one ethnic-majority seat in any legislature, despite nearly a million of them on the electoral rolls.

The community must seize the moral high ground and have nothing to do with the BN which, as the last GE proved, doesn't really need Indian votes to keep Putrajaya. Umno is more concerned about denying Indian votes to the Opposition and in return has offered the prospect of throwing some crumbs directly at the community instead of routing these through their political mandores in MIC and PPP. PR meanwhile has enthusiastically embraced the political mandore system being abandoned by Umno/BN.

PKR, the glue that holds Dap and Pas together in PR, was formed by the losing side after the proverbial falling out of thieves in Umno. Its aim is to replace Umno in the Federal Government.

New faces can be given the benefit of the doubt

Dap meanwhile has done a good job of wooing the urban and Chinese voters away from BN, on the verge of collapse on the eve of the GE.

Umno can no longer afford to give BN the seats where the Malays form the single biggest community but still less than 50 per cent. PR is set to sweep these seats from BN and Umno thinks it will have a better chance than its lapdog to retain the Malay voters.

Indians, having burnt their bridges with PR in the aftermath of 2008, have no reason to worry about the fate of the Opposition Alliance no matter what's in store for them. It's for the non-Indian urban and Chinese voters to save PR as their best vehicle to bring them to power in Putrajaya.

Indians must walk a lonely path in politics, even one that involves a spell in the cold or wilderness.

The community can give new faces, making their electoral debut in the 13th GE, the benefit of the doubt provided they endorse the Hindraf Blueprint. If both BN and PR candidates in a particular seat endorse the Blueprint, it's for the voters in that locality to decide among themselves which candidate appears more credible.

On balance, it would be difficult for Indians to endorse BN new faces given the ugly history of the coalition.

Alternatively, they can root for a 3rd candidate if there's one in the fray, provided the Blueprint is endorsed.

Not in Indian interest to see PR fail and crumble

If Hindraf fields candidates, probably under one common symbol and flag, Indians should naturally vote for this NGO as it offers them the best hope for the future. Indians decide in 67 parliamentary seats, and the related state seats, in Malaya. It's likely that Hindraf, win or lose, will garner more Indian votes than BN and PR combined and especially from among the underclass.

Hindraf and the new faces aside, Indians should vote against all incumbents. They can do this, not by abstaining or boycotting, but spoiling the ballots in protest against their marginalisation and disenfranchisement. Hopefully, there will be one million spoilt ballots to earn a place in world history and focus the attention of the international community and the UN on the plight of the Indian Nation in Malaysia.

Abstaining has been mentioned as a weapon so that the winners will know why they won i.e. the Indians didn't vote against them. The losers will know why they lost i.e. the Indians didn't vote for them.

If the last GE is any guide, the winners in this case would be the BN and PR the losers. It's the PR which needs Indian votes, not the BN.

Does the Indian community really want to see PR losing all its states? That would only strengthen Umno/BN, the sworn enemies of the Indian Nation, and make it all the more difficult to remove this scourge which has been plaguing the nation the last half century and more.

Ketuanan Melayu the great barrier to Indian advancement

Or should it take the position that the enemy (PR) of my enemy (Umno/BN) is my friend even if not so friendly.

Is it really in the Indian interest to see the return of BN stronger than ever or would it be more strategic to keep giving PR the chances that it obviously doesn't deserve but only until the ruling coalition has been driven out from Putrajaya? The only reason that Umno/BN is being respectful towards the Indians is because of the presence of PR. If PR is no longer around, Umno/BN will ignore the Indians once more like before 2008.

Some would say that there's method in madness if the Indians turn to the Opposition once again after having installed PR in Putrajaya. The odds are against the opposition peacefully assuming power in Malaysia as there are no free and fair elections in the country and it may be virtually impossible to overthrow BN through the ballot box.

Indians can have no part in Government unless and until the Sapu Bersih deviations and distortions of Article 153 in the Federal Constitution and the NEP are ended; the issue of statelessness dealt with; anti non-Malay minorities administrative laws be scrapped; Islam kept in its proper perspective as per Article 3 of the Federal Constitution which doesn't mention any official religion; the intrusion of Syariah and the Syariah Courts into civil law ended; forced and bogus conversions to Islam be outlawed; the bogus conversion of non-Muslims to Islam upon marring Muslims be outlawed; and Muslims be allowed to leave Islam without the sanction of the Syariah Court.

That's unlikely to happen as long as Umno continues its policy of ketuanan Melayu (Malay political domination and supremacy) -- a sick combination of Apartheid, Nazism, and Fascism, Communism, Political Islam and the caste system which allows no upward social mobility – driven by racism, prejudice and opportunism.

Now is not the time to play the devil's advocate. Hindraf Makkal Sakthi must announce its unconditional support for PR come the 13th GE although it has vowed No Free Votes.

It's more important for Indians at this stage to think about punishing, and even destroying Umno and BN, than to worry about what they can get out of a PR Government in Putrajaya.

Joe Fernandez is a graduate mature student of law and an educationist, among others, who loves to write especially Submissions for Clients wishing to Act in Person and tutor at local institutions. He feels compelled, as a semi-retired journalist, to put pen to paper -- or rather the fingers to the computer keyboard -- whenever something doesn't quite jell with his weltanschauung (worldview). He shuttles between points in the Golden Heart of Borneo formed by the Sabah west coast, Labuan, Brunei, northern Sarawak and the watershed region in Borneo where three nations meet. He's half-way through a semi-autobiographical travelogue, A World with a View.

The new front-line states in GE13

Posted: 10 Apr 2013 10:49 AM PDT

Johan Saravanamuttu, Today Online

The 13th General Election of Malaysia to be held on May 5 promises to be the toughest ever to be fought between the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (BN) and the Opposition, the Pakatan Rakyat (PR).

What are the so-called new front-line states in the capture and defence of Putrajaya? I take "front-line states" to mean those that will be defended or won at the state level, and those that could deliver more parliamentary seats to the Opposition.

Kelantan, Kedah, Penang and Selangor are front-line states for the PR to defend, while Perak is an important front-line state for the BN to keep, since it was taken over after the 2008 General Election.

Added to mix now are Negeri Sembilan, Johor, Sarawak and Sabah, where the PR is targeting its state governments and, more importantly, the capture of parliamentary seats in new terrain.

The PR is banking on a continuation of the non-Malay swing of 2008 and a splitting of the Malay vote, which the 16 by-elections held since 2008 — in which each side scored an equal number of wins — appears to affirm.

NEGERI SEMBILAN

First, a brief word: In Penang and Kelantan, few back the BN's chances of a takeover, while in Selangor and Perak, the pundits are talking about 50-50 odds.

In Kedah, the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) is said to be weak under Menteri Besar Azizan Abdul Razak, with the party dogged by internal squabbles, a poor public policy record, and unpopular actions, such as the stopping of stage shows and karaoke lounges, which has irked non-Muslims.

The prospect of Dr Mahathir Mohamad's son Mukhriz as a potential Menteri Besar has also created a small stir. The BN would need to capture five more seats to overtake the PR in the 36-seat State Assembly, in which the PR holds 20 seats.

The irony for the BN is that the converse could happen in Negeri Sembilan, a new front-line state, where the BN has only a slim majority in a 36-seat state assembly. The PR, with 15 seats, is four seats short of assuming power in the state. The key factor lies in the weakness of the non-Malay coalition partners within UMNO — the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), Malaysian Indian Congress and the virtually non-existent Gerakan in this state.

State Opposition leader Mr Anthony Loke of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) will lead the charge in contesting Chennah, a seat which has a mixed constituency of 54 per cent Chinese, 41 per cent Malays, and 3 per cent Indians. In 2008, the MCA candidate had won this constituency by fewer than 1,300 votes.

It is in such seats that the DAP generally holds an advantage, with the swing of Chinese voters to the opposition. (It is worth noting that Mr Loke is an MP for Rasah, a constituency with a similar ethnic make-up which he won in 2008 by more than 13,000 votes against his MCA opponent.)

SHIFT IN JOHOR

This leads us to Johor. How could this state, in which the PR took only one parliamentary and six state seats previously, be now seen as "front line"?

The PR's fate rests mainly upon Chinese votes and the "battle royale" building between the DAP and the MCA in Johor.

The MCA has floundered as a party wracked by factionalism ever since Dr Chua Soi Lek won the leadership struggle in 2009. This explains in no small measure the erosion of Chinese support in the BN's erstwhile bastion of Johor.

DAP party strategist Mr Liew Chin Tong (who will stand in Kluang) describes Johor's seats as having become "dominos". Somewhat optimistically, he thinks that some 20 seats could fall to the PR. This is premised on the expectation of 35 per cent Malay, 80 per cent Chinese and 50 per cent Indian support in the state, and the fact that most Johor seats are of the mixed variety.

Only in eight out of Johor's 26 parliamentary seats do Malays make up more than 60 per cent of voters. No seat has more than 60 per cent of Chinese voters.

Johor has also been targeted by the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and the PAS. PKR's Johor party chief Mr Chua Jui Meng was formerly Vice-President of the MCA and BN Minister for Health, but he is now a firm PKR man who will run in Segamat. The PAS will send Vice-President Salahuddin Ayub to contest the Pulai parliamentary seat and the Nusa Jaya state seat, with the distant hope that he could be made the Johor Menteri Besar.

How the tide has changed in Kluang

Posted: 10 Apr 2013 10:47 AM PDT

Lee Kaw

A visible shift in public sentiment in this Johor constituency reflects how the battle is shaping up in what was considered a bastion of the BN.

N. Nadeswaran, The Sun Daily

AFTER the DAP's announcement on March 30 that its elections strategist Liew Chin Tong would be the party's candidate for Kluang, a small group of party leaders including Lim Kit Siang walked nonchalantly into the Kluang Country Club. Members, who were having their beers after finishing their round of golf, gave a thunderous welcome and offered the visitors the hospitality usually reserved for VIPs.

Three days later, it was the turn of Johor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Ghani Othman to turn up at the club with trappings of pomp and protocol. But the response was subdued even though it is election time when you could get an unexpected windfall. Ghani announced a RM100,000 grant to the club from the state government.

These contrasting events reflect how the battle is shaping up in what was considered a bastion of the MCA and the Barisan Nasional (BN). The donation although welcomed, was met with cynicism – if he wants to give, why should we refuse?

One of the doyens of the club is Lee Kaw. He's 74 and was DAP's sole MP in Johor for just one term – elected in 1978, after which the BN through MCA has held on to the seat.

Last Saturday, he made his first political speech in a crowded shop house in Kluang after 26 years. But Lee Kaw still retains the fire in his belly despite staying away from politics since 1982.

Lee Kaw came out of "retirement" on a request to oblige an old comrade, Kit Siang, to assist the DAP in shoring up support for Liew to wrest the Kluang seat. And the thunderous reception and applause he got when he finally spoke at the launch of the party's operations centre was indicative of his influence on the people. It was not just from Chinese constituents. The response he received when he popped by for a coffee at the nearby Kopi Tiam showed his popularity.

"Those days, we campaigned for our voices to be heard in Parliament or the State Assembly. We talked about the cost of contracts, the issue of land and Chinese new villages. There were 86 such villages in Kluang which were in need of development," says Lee Kaw who was party treasurer when Kit Siang was the head honcho of the party.

Issues have since changed after all these years. Corruption, economic development and cost of living have taken centre stage. Locals say that Kluang has been left out of development. And of course, winning this seat is significant in Pakatan Rakyat's (PR) proposed march to Putrajaya.

"We have been 'colonised' for 26 years. While towns like Muar and Batu Pahat have enjoyed so much development, we can only say that our progress has been stagnant," says a local businessman.

Ansari tests PKR's sincerity

Posted: 09 Apr 2013 03:46 PM PDT

PRE-EMPTIVE MOVE: State PKR leader names candidates early as a show of 'autonomy'

Ansari's move appears to pre-empt the likely possibility that incumbent Tuaran MP Datuk Seri Wilfred Bumburing and incumbent Beaufort MP Datuk Seri Lajim Ukin, who threw their weight behind the PKR last year, might have their own list of prefered candidates for the seven seats.

Joniston Bangkuai, NST

WHILE the Sabah Barisan Nasional (BN) is raring to face the 13th General Election as a united and cohesive team, the opposition appears to be fragmented despite their common objective of unseating the ruling coalition.

As it stands, the election is expected to see two opposition camps -- one comprising of peninsula-based parties and the other Sabah-based parties -- taking on the BN in the land below the wind.

This follows the failure of the loose coalition of opposition parties made up of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), DAP and Pas to reach a compromise with local-based Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) and the Sabah chapter of the State Reform Party (STAR) on a single candidate to fight BN in every seat.

After being rejected as "small parties without much support" by PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the Datuk Seri Yong Teck Lee-led SAPP and Sabah Star headed by political nomad Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan, have agreed in principle to cooperate in the election.

There is also a possibility of a fourth force made up of PKR leaders who will likely leave the party if their demands to be fielded as candidates are ignored by the PKR leadership.

State PKR stalwart Ansari Abdullah had last week announced the names of divisional leaders as candidates in seven parliamentary constituencies, contending that they have been working very hard for the party over the last five years.

Word has been making the rounds that Anwar had given Bumburing and Lajim the power to choose PKR candidates for several parliamentary and state seats as part of the deal for them to ditch the BN.

It is learnt that the seven parliamentary seats eyed by divisional leaders aligned to Ansari are said to be seats Bumburing and Lajim have asked to be given a say on who should be the candidate.

The seven included Ansari, who declared himself as the PKR candidate for the Tuaran parliamentary seat which Bumburing as its former MP hopes to defend.

Bumburing and Lajim are said to have started scouting for potential candidates long before they announced their decision to hop into the opposition.

Many PKR divisional leaders, who claimed to have been working very hard to strengthen the party at the grassroots level, had from the start feared that the alleged power given by Anwar to Bumburing and Lajim might mean they would be sidelined and not considered as candidates.

"I had sensed it from the beginning that Bumburing and Lajim's move to support Pakatan may throw a spanner in the works of the opposition's hope of making an impact in Sabah," said a PKR divisional leader who spoke on condition of anonymity.

When revealing the names of the seven proposed candidates, Ansari had boldly said that he expected Anwar and the party leadership of Pas and DAP to honour their commitment and assurance that matters involving Sabah will be decided by Sabahans.

"In line with the promise for autonomy (by Pakatan Rakyat leadership), we have taken the liberty to release the names of the seven candidates that have been picked by the respective divisions.

"This is a test of whether the Pakatan Rakyat party leadership is sincere in its promise to give us autonomy," Ansari said, claiming that the candidates have long been identified, as far back as two years ago.

Speculation is rife that Ansari and his group may either contest as independents or align themselves with SAPP if their demands are ignored by the PKR leadership.

As for the BN, it is all systems go in its quest to keep Sabah as the the ruling coalition's fixed-deposit, although it may face some tough challenges in several constituencies.

Fraud in Malaysian politics never-ending

Posted: 09 Apr 2013 01:21 PM PDT

If the 1987 Umno presidential election is taken as one yardstick, the response of the Court may not be in favour of a novel development of the law or, as some would allege, making law.

The Indians are united by Hindraf Makkal Sakthi, the Chinese are united by their bank drafts, and the Malays by their overdrafts. The makkal sakthi – people power in Tamil – cries of Interlok Pariah Umno is being heard again as the seatless Indians rail against the ruling party.

Joe Fernandez

In that party election, the Court discovered that votes from 30 illegal party branches may have contributed towards Mahathir Mohamad's narrow 43-vote victory over his challenger Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah. It was alleged that the 30 illegal branches were aligned towards Mahathir. Even so, in a surprising ruling, Judge Harun Hashim declared the entire party unlawful. Had the Judge concluded that the illegal votes may have gone in the direction of Razaleigh, that ruling would not have arisen since the outcome was not affected!

Harun Hashim bought kamikaze arguments and denied Razaleigh

The Court did not take into consideration that the presidential election was only unlawful to the extent of the illegal votes and the party unlawful to the extent of the illegal branches. The Jury may still be out on the question of whether the Judge could have discounted the illegal votes and handed the presidential victory to Razaleigh. Many will argue that he could have but unfortunately he didn't. The good judge has long gone to meet his maker. Dead men tell no tales.

Even if Mahathir had won by one vote, and it was determined that his victory was due to one illegal voter, the outcome had been affected. Both Mahathir and Razaleigh, the one illegal vote removed, had tied.

One mitigating circumstance against the party being declared unlawful was that it had helmed the country since independence for Malaya in 1957 and steered the birth of Malaysia in 1963.

That approach could not be misconstrued as judicial activism using the fig leaf that our system of justice is adversarial.

Alas, the Judge bought the kamikaze arguments in Court that he had no alternative but declare the entire party unlawful if the Court concluded that illegal branches had participated in the presidential elections and illegal votes had also been counted. Again, the Court is not about the truth, justice or moral values but the law, no matter how much weighted against the public interest.

Court no help in awarding victory to the real polls winners

In another case, on 8 June, 2001 Election Court Justice Muhammad Kamil Awang made a landmark decision declaring the March 13, 1999, Likas election result null and void after upholding two election petitions filed by losing PBS candidate Dr Chong En Leong and former Chief Minister Harris Salleh of Parti Bersekutu. Justice Kamil had affirmed that the Likas electoral roll was tainted with more than 5,000 phantom voters. But who obtained those votes?

Former Barisan Nasional-rotated Sabah Chief Minister Yong Teck Lee, who polled 9,110 votes against 4, 962 by Dr Chong, lost the seat. Yong had won by 4, 962 votes. Harris drew 3,576 votes.

Even if all of the Likas-resident Harris' votes came from the illegals, a likely possibility but nevertheless strenuously denied by those in his camp, that still left over 1,424 votes from the illegals for Yong since these people wouldn't vote for PBS, then in the Opposition. If these 1,424 votes are discounted from Yong's margin of victory, he still won by 3,538 votes. Only judicial activism could have saved Yong unless the ballot boxes were opened up and each voted recounted.

In a 15 June, 2001 media statement, then Dap National Chairman Lim Kit Siang lamented the subsequent disclosure that the Judge had received a telephone directive from someone at the top of the Judiciary to strike out the Likas petition without a hearing. Lim's beef was that the Judge did not disclose the telephone call in Court.

So, not much can be placed in the case of proven electoral fraud, on the Court stripping the winner of a disputed victory and awarding it to his nearest challenger.

Never ending go back to India, China cries from Nusantara people

There should be a system in place for the Court, in case of election petitions alleging fraud, to scrutinize the ballot papers and determine who collected whose vote. That would be the most efficient way to determine polls winners instead of a re-poll which would necessitate the cleaning up of the electoral rolls, a process which has been bitterly disputed in the past.

Still, the bottomline may not even be the extent of electoral fraud.

It comes back to the system again.

The greatest fraud perpetrated against the people of Malaysia is the formation of pre-polls coalitions. These coalitions circumvent the democratic process by endorsing elite power-sharing and denying the grassroots majority meaningful participation in the electoral process. The formation of coalitions should only be allowed, by law, after the elections are over.

Coalition government need not be inevitability.

The party with the most number of seats in Parliament, for example, can share the Federal Cabinet and Government posts with other political parties without entering into coalition government.

If coalition government is the option exercise, such a coalition must disband on the eve of the next elections to ensure a free for all at the ballot box. That by itself would spell the end of political parties based on narrow considerations like race and religion.

Politics can then be fought on issues and these may be urban, suburban, rural, coastal, from the interior or the high mountain country. No longer would anyone be identified by his race or religion in politics or whether he's an Orang Asal, recently or long arrived or the descendents of those recently arrived or long arrived.

No longer would anyone be told to "go back to India or China", for example, if they are "not happy in Malaysia".

No pledge from Dap not to fraudulently embrace Umno

Every election, and in the run-up to elections, the Indian community in particular are subject to all sorts of indignities, racial abuse and derogatory remarks in the struggle to confine the national cake to a smaller number of people.

The Opposition is a marriage of convenience united by Malay hatred in particular for the BN in general and Umno in particular. The marriage appears to be less unholy now than when it was first formed.

The BN in Malaya, apart from Umno, has fallen apart and will crumble under a united Opposition assault come this 13th GE but will continue in Sabah and Sarawak, mauled and bruised in the latter in particular but still taking power.

In the absence of a public pledge, it's being speculated that the urban and Chinese-based Dap would not hesitate to abandon its Malay and Islamic partners, PKR and Pas, in the aftermath of the 13th GE and team up with Umno to share the Federal Government provided the MCA and Gerakan are removed. That would be like the Pap of Singapore fraudulently achieving by the backdoor what it failed to do in Malaysia.

People of Borneo given the short end of the stick in Malaysia

The greatest fraud perpetrated in Malaysia was to weaken the voice of the people of Borneo nations in Parliament.

The two countries, Sabah and Sarawak, have a combined 57 seats in Parliament, less than the at least one third plus one promised by the 1963 Malaysia Agreement. This is 18 less seats than they should have out of 222 seats.

To add insult to injury, many of the 57 seats are held by Malaya-based parties across the political divide, thus further weakening the voice of the people of Borneo in the Malaysian Parliament.

The Registrar of Societies (ROS) is a party to these political parties being in violation of the Malaysia Agreement. It facilitates Putrajaya ruling Sabah and Sarawak through rogue elements – Projek IC operatives, Moro National Liberation Front, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Abu Sayyaf – local proxies (local Muslims and illegals) and their stooges (Orang Asal).

The Malaya-based parties have not even been locally-incorporated in Sabah and Sarawak to comply with at least the letter, if not the spirit, of the Malaysia Agreement.

If politics is all about the re-distribution of power and resources, the people of Borneo are being given the short end of the stick in their already disputed participation Malaysia.

There could be no greater fraud than this.

Mere ‘fraud’ not consideration in 13th GE

Posted: 09 Apr 2013 01:12 PM PDT

No election anywhere in the world is without an element of fraud.

What's more important to consider in the post-GE period is whether fraudulent practices in terms of vote count at the ballot box were of a magnitude which affected the outcome; what would be the response of the Court if indeed fraudulent practices had determined the outcome.

Joe Fernandez

Malaysians by and large worry that "fraudulent practices" by way of the electoral rolls and at the ballot box will cheat them out of the Government they want in Putrajaya and in the states. This should not be read as having a Pakatan Rakyat (PR) Government in the Federal Administrative Centre instead of one formed by the Barisan Nasional (BN).

Fraud can work both ways although the outgoing BN, revamped from the Alliance Party in the wake of the searing Sino-Malay race riots of 13 May, 1969, has ruled the country since 1957 when the British left Malaya.

In the absence of proof in the form of the proverbial smoking gun, indefinite BN rule by itself should not be seen as having been facilitated by fraudulent electoral practices. The formation of the BN itself stretched out the welcome mat for the Alliance Party.

The system itself is at fault.

The playing field is not level.

The Court should not allow the gazetting of tainted electoral rolls even if evidence of such fraud, for example Projek IC and the like, was discovered well after the public display and objection period for such rolls is over.

The delineation of constituencies is another issue since it facilitates gerrymandering.

Winning by default not evidence of fraud in elections

Putrajaya, for example, is a parliamentary seat with less than 6,000 voters. There are many Putrajayas in Malaysia which are all BN territory. Indeed, it has even been estimated that with as little as 18.9 per cent of the votes cast, the BN can still obtain 112 seats in Parliament to form the Federal Government. There are 222 seats in Parliament.

Meanwhile, Opposition strongholds have anything up to 100,000 or more voters. So, BN can still lose the popular vote and form the majority in Parliament, for example. In that case, only its moral right to govern can be questioned by the Opposition and the people. The Court is not about the truth, justice or moral values. It's about the law.

To digress a little, the Congress in India at one time, before the advent of coalition government, was able to form the Federal Government single-handedly with less than 30 per cent of the total votes cast. 18.9 per cent in Malaysia would be even more shocking!

There's a case for limiting the number of registered voters in any parliamentary seat to 50,000, plus or minus either way, within a 10,000 range. So, Putrajaya by itself will not qualify to be a parliamentary seat.

Even so, the Opposition has not been able to get its act together in recent years until the watershed 12th General Election of 2008.

Defection of Opposition after May 13 fraud perpetrated on the people

So, the ruling party can still win by default as it has been the case in Sarawak except for one point in time in 1987 known as the Ming Court Affair. After that, the Malay-based Permas disbanded and its ally, the Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) joined the state government in coalition, only to find itself deregistered several years later. That set back Opposition politics in Sarawak until 2009 when the Malaya-based Opposition, despite not being united, made a credible showing in the state election.

This time the same Opposition is more united than ever in Sarawak but it is only the parliamentary seats are at stake. Seven to eight parliamentary seats, out of the 31 at stake in Sarawak, are already in the bag for the Opposition. It does not have any local Opposition parties to contend with apart from the mosquito Sarawak Workers Party (SWP), bankrolled curiously among others by Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud to do in a coalition partner, the rising Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), the part successor party to PBDS.

The people of Sarawak appear to be willing to place Sabah opposition strongman Jeffrey Kitingan's Borneo Agenda on the backburner for the moment as they wrestle with the Herculean task of removing the Taib Dynasty from power. They are willing to enter a temporary marriage of convenience with the Malaya-based Opposition parties for this singular purpose. The Borneo Agenda is explained as being against everything that the parti parti Malaya in Borneo stands for and their local presence.

The 10 May, 1969 General Election became an aberration when the Opposition fled to the newly step up BN to replace the Alliance Party.

Part of the blame for the political weakness of the opposition in Malaysia can be placed on the since discarded International Security Act (ISA) which hung like the proverbial Sword of Damocles over the Opposition and also struck fear in the people at large.

Majority right to rule, minority right to be heard

Mass civil disobedience was not employed by the Opposition as a weapon in their arsenal. There were no hungry stomachs to march. People still had food on the table. It's not like in France when Marie Antoinette, the Austrian-born Queen of France during the 1789 Revolution, infamously remarked, "If the people have no bread, let them eat cake". This was her response to news that the peasants were starving. King Louis XVI was beheaded on 21 Jan, 1793 for treason, "trying to get help from royal supporters in England, Prussia and Austria". Marie Antoinette was beheaded on 16 October, 1793 for the same crime.

The first past the post system should be reviewed to allow for the voices of the losing voters to be heard in the legislature, through non-constituency based seats, if a party which failed to win even one seat in any legislature managed to muster a minimum five per cent of the votes cast nationwide. While the majority – as reflected in the legislature – has the right to rule, the minority i.e. the losing votes in elections, has a right to be heard. That's true democracy!

Effecting the outcome the principle in determining election fraud

The BN, thick-skinned as they are when it comes to corruption issues, are extremely sensitive when it comes to any hints of any element of fraud in the quest for power. It's aware that the eyes of the world are on it and besides there's the question of the Malay maruah – self-respect – and the issue of legitimacy to consider on such issues, if not in corruption.

This maruah/legitimacy factors, the Malay Achilles Heel, has seen the BN Government setting up the long-awaited Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on the extraordinary population explosion in Sabah and its reflection in the electoral rolls. The same factors, maruah and legitimacy, has seen the BN wrestling with the issues of statelessness, and the marginalisation and disenfranchisement of the Indian Nation in Malaysia, the legitimacy of Malaysia in Sabah and Sarawak, and the right of Malaysians abroad to vote.

Legitimacy by itself has wider implications, embracing security considerations, and its reflection on valuation in the economy in several areas driven by investor and consumer confidence viz. the strength of the currency, value of stocks, property prices, credit risk, credit rating and the like. When politics comes in through the door, economics will fly out the window with widespread security and other implications which will render any quest for political power either pointless or a phyric victory.

When it comes down to brass tacks, mere fraudulent practices in the GE, abominable as they are to those who claim the moral high ground, are not the main consideration in law.

No election anywhere in the world is without an element of fraud.

Many options for people to act against fraud in elections

The respective share of the popular vote is immaterial except for the Opposition and the people taking to the streets and demanding fresh polls, free and fair, under an Interim Government or the inclusion of the Opposition in the division of Cabinet and Government posts without resort to coalition government.

A 3rd alternative is a Revolutionary Government formed by the people. Revolutionary Government would also be the option if the people conclude that there's no way that the BN can be dethroned through the ballot box.

Kredit: www.malaysia-today.net

Sabtu, 13 April 2013

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

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