The Malays In Critical Dilemma Again

Caught midstream in geopolitical turbulence a mile wide with the South-Asian war on the right bank and on the left the Koreas on the boil, Malays in Malaysia may wish they can keep looking straight to avoid having to decide which way they have to go. But they must decide, and fast. Time is running out on them.

There is no middle ground left in the surge of asymmetrical terror in the Clash of Civilizations.

Our old friend in Cuba, Comrade Fidel Castro, has been saying since his recovery from bad health that the war is now verging on the ultimate nuclear holocaust. He may be right.

While the Man of Peace, Barrack Hussein Obama, preside over that civilization clash from the White House, India and Pakistan, both reluctant allies of the US (purposed mainly for the Containment of China), have applied to become members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that started out with Russia, China and five of the Central Asian countries.

As India sets aside US2 billion to reopen the Ledo Road built during WW II to reach Kun Ming through Myanmar, Pakistan and China have agreed in principle to extend the Korakoram road into a highway that will run through the Northwest Frontier into Baluchistan to the new port on the shore of the Indian Ocean.

China has also told Afghanistan she is ready to build a railway connection from Kandahar to the same port in Balochistan.

Iran, meantime, after successfully leading the ECO countries in building the rail connection between Islamabad and Istanbul, has committed US3 billion to build a railway from Herat to Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan.

After the US has sent back Afghanistan to the Stone Age and that once wondrous country has become the world’s largest producer of opium to stay alive, the great hegemonic power slapped the much-disliked Kerry Lugar aid-trap on Pakistan, giving the US virtually all authority to micro-manage Pakistan in exchange for the paltry USD7.5 billion spread through five years.

Pakistan has since become a death-trap and thoroughly a failed-state, now fearing the US will demand her small arsenal of nuclear bombs and render her defenseless in the South-Asian territorial conflict. To make matters worse, she is currently flooded with 20 million of her people badly affected.

Against the American war, Chinese outfits have been building quality roads in Central Asia and have begun to take electricity from there to eventually reach Turkey, for industry.

Kashgar, the Old Silk Road largest bazaar on the Tajik-Xinjiang border will soon be rebuilt into a modern city with giant trading and shopping malls, with roads leading out to Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and to the Korakorum and to the heart of China.

The contrast between the US and China-Russia with the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) is a simple contrast of War and Peace, leaving Obama, the Friend of Peace, on the side of War – a good man living with bad joss.

That’s about the right bank of the Malay world, in a nutshell. Just as border tensions become unnaturally and unnecessarily high between India and China, the world was edged into frantic tensions on the left bank over the two Koreas, the tensions reaching straight to the Spratlys, the Straits of Malacca, the whole of the China Sea and its neighborhood and stretching the Pacific into a grasp of heat.

In short, the turbulence on the left and right banks of the Malay World translates into World War.

While in the development even Sri Lanka has turned towards the peace-bearing SCO (and ECO), Malaysia, which had spearheaded the move to set-up our own East-Asian Caucus (involving ASEAN, China, Korea and Japan) has now virtually retracted that East Asian peace initiative.

EAC would have given Asean and her partners the leverages needed to return the tension-filled Containment of China back into negotiable conduct of trade,development and cultural exchanges.

It would have also given the chance for Asean countries to redistribute Asean trade which has been hogged by Singapore, the island republic taking the lion’s share o about 65 percent from the start.

Malaysia was en-route to leading the pack of 10 to reform the trade and economic profiles of our regional bloc when the previous to the previous premier led himself into a hilarious power skirmish with his nemesis, Anwar Ibrahim, making them both losers. It was ostensibly about sodomy.

Now, with the US-Vietnam nuclear agreement causing the scenario to totally change, the Malays, as they are led by Umno, are quite apparently in a state of bewilderment and not knowing on which side of the Malay River (Sungai Melayu) will the harvests become gold, and which will be fire.

Because around 30 percent of Malaysia is Chinese and the Chinese have been more economically successful in Malaysia (as well as in all Asean), it seems safe to say Malays in Malaysia are generally scared the Chinese would run them aground politically, sooner or later.

But how can the Chinese do that if the Malays do not sell off their birthrights this writer hasn’t been able to grasp since the beginning of time.

In other words, that fear seems to be seated on the self-assumption the Malays are corrupt, are naturally corruptible and will sell off their birthrights for a fee and bits of flesh, like it had been in Palembang and Jambe, the Malay heartland.

Some Malays appear to have been gripped by US propaganda that has made China into a US archrival now that the Muslims have been reduced into intra-Islam anarchy of sects (and sexes).

China, on the other hand, is the third country in Space and has modernized her arsenal to include ICBMs with cluster-nuclear warheads. But the US may be able to blow these with her anti-missile lasers.

The meaning is this: China is still decades away from becoming a contestant for hegemony or even for hemispheric imperialism.

China is, instead, a very successful vendor of intercontinental trade, diplomacy and development.

The same as with Iran, which the US and Zionists want us to believe is well on the way to becoming a regional power wishing to nuke Israel, China too is being made into a bogey by the US.

Some Malays enjoy this fear-the-Chinese syndrome. It had been a Malay trait from before WW II and dubbed in history as the Great Fear, becoming the motive force of the efficient anti-Chinese movement in 1944-46.

Truth is, China has just moved into a GDP of US5 trillion. Because the Japanese GDP had shrunk a bit, China may have become statistically the second largest economy in the world.

But that is US5 trillion in a country of 1.3 billion. It makes the Chinese urban per capita income only about RM5,000 and with about RM1,500 for the rural. Take note the numbers are in RM, not USD.

That is, indeed, a great leap for what had been an abject poverty-clutch only three decades before. But China would need time to use domestic consumer spending to boost her economy. She will be export-dependent for a long while yet.

This means, unless she reverts to the old style of command economy, she is not about to become imperial.

Militarily, while she has a huge infantry and a remarkably fast-expanding modern air force, she is merely in the process of building her first two aircraft-carriers to contest the mighty US Pacific Fleet.

Hence, the danger China poses to us is more in her cheap goods than in her military might. She is a US embarrassment because of the US1.8 trillion America owes to the Bank of China rather than for being militarily a contestant.

Because the US and Britain/Europe have all the time been technology-stingy, more and more countries in the world have been looking to China and Russia for technology-transfer and for state-of-the-art aircrafts and weaponry.

The US sold us (Malaysia) F-fighter jets without giving us the code to open the bomb-hatch! Will they give us the code if Anwar Ibrahim becomes the Malaysia Prime Minister? Is there any guarantee forthcoming from the Pentagon or from the Whitey House?

The Chinese isn’t much of a threat. Chinese in Malaysia can become difficult if they were to smuggle into the country something like three million persons from the Chinese mainland into the recently constructed economic corridors.

Short of that kind of a stunning human smuggling racket, the Chinese in Malaysia are at worst merely a case of bad breath, and at best, a vibrant commercial and industrial community that can become astounding with the right opportunities and the right mannerisms.

This is to say in the Sino-Malay periodical effervescences, it is the Malays that have been at fault.

Corruption-prone, they have been quick to swerve into banshee-screaming to extend the tenure of the super-privileged gotten-rich-quick class of Malay princes, politicians, contractors and businessmen, the Malay Labor left out and instead, made to pay for the costs of the hubris and debauchery. Malaysia is now on the edge of bankruptcy.

Hardly anything has gone into the way of Labor under the leadership of Najib Tun Razak who is hosting the High Income Economy, ensuring his father, The Great Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, is now truly dead.

Hardly anything worth redeeming has been heard of a Social Policy in Najib’s New Economic Model (NEM), him busy wooing Chinese and Indian voters who probably will continue to vote against the Barisan Nasional (BN), anyway.

The Malays are in critical dilemma once again for the lack of an ideological guidance other than an absurdly distorted Islam,

One Malaysia must need an ideology that can offer Malaysians a way out of the ethnic and sectarian conflicts or it will merely be a political posture worth no more than a lollipop that will melt under the sun.

The Malays have no place to rally around. This is an industrial society and it is senseless to believe Malays can anymore stand together around fundamental Islam or around the pool of the super-privileged nationalist elite that has gone berserk in corrupt practices and in arrogance.

Going back to Labor in Co-production is possibly the only way there is.-- a. ghani ismail, 22 August, 2010

ISRAEL’S MURDER OF HUMANITY

Israel made no mistakes in the killing of at least nine aid volunteers and wounding 45 on board the Mavi Marmara leading the Flotilla of Freedom before dawn on Monday, 31 May, 2010, in the Mediterranean international waters 120 km from the coastline.

700 Israel elite troopers (commandos) were dispatched against the 700 unarmed multinational volunteers in a flotilla of seven seeking to save 100,000 homeless Gazans.

Among the dead is Swedish bestselling mystery author, Henning Mankell, it was reported. The wounded have been transferred to an Israeli hospital and reports say more may die in the next several days.

The Gazans are victims of the close-border stranglehold Israel and Egypt imposed from three years ago. Israel killed tens of thousands of Gazans in an invasion last year.

The Freedom Flotilla, put together by international humanitarian lifeline for Gaza on the intiative of the Freedom For Gaza Movement based in Cyprus, aimed to breach the siege with food, medicine and construction material, a simple humanitarian act that would be called charity in any language, including Hebrew, other than in Israel.

Israel imaged that charity as a breach of her security, an act of unimaginable malevolence by a bunch of Islamic states, meaning that the country the British and Americans had helped found in the wake of the World War II has a psyche of her own the rest of humanity can hardly deem as belonging to anything humane.



Turkey foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu said Israel 'has lost all legitimacy' and its action 'constitute a grave breach of international law...It is murder conducted by a state.'

The flotilla is not all done. The Rachel Corrie and two cargo ships have decided to continue to Gaza on June 1. It has Malaysians and Irish volunteers on board. The internaional community will have to protect the volunteers on board or never live down this event of castaway diplomacy against a regime of crime. Pro-Israel news agencies, and they are probably 75 percent of the old media, are saying the volunteers started the fight on the Mavi Marmara armed Israeli commandos boarded.

The picture below is of one of several protests in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday, 1st June, 2010.

It is another of Israel’s act of mass murder. Until the UNSC does something effective to end the inhuman atrocities of this brutal regime, simply boycott everything of Israel NOW! But make no mistake when asking the US to shun Israel. She is the USA's forward base in the Medterranean and the Arab World, now also of the Greater Middle East.

In all of her 62 years of existence Israel has never tolerated any difference of point of view. Any opinion that differs with her viewpoint is regarded as malevolent and belligerent. It's now about the Free Gaza Movement and you.- a. ghani ismail, 1 June, 2010




Part 2

Murder on Mavi Marmara - Malaysian Journalist Tells The Story



The young journalist from the Malaysian satellite television station was evicted to safety from a prison in Israel. He and hundred of volunteers in the Aid Flotilla were taken to the southern Israeli port of Ashdod by Israeli commandos from international waters 120 meters out to sea in the Mediterranean. They were attacked, 9 killed on board the Mavi Marmara and 10 dead to the time of writing. Forty five were sent to the hospital, mostly with gunshot wounds, some in critical condition.

Astro Awani’s Ashwad Ismail, 26, said on his arrival in Jordan, he had only been 28 hours in one of Israel’s prison and that brief experience after the brutality he encountered on board the Mavi Marmara gave him a taste of Palestine sufferings endured through 62 years of the brutal regime.

The Israeli commandos had surrounded the Mavi Marmara by 11 pm and they invaded at 2.45 in the morning. There were three helicopters circling overhead and in the sea were troops on boats. They invaded and shot at us with live bullets, Ashwad recounted.

“I had called Awani in Kuala Lumpur at 7.45 pm to inform them what reports to expect from me. I could not imagine Israel would do this. Suddenly I found myself crawling on the deck in a sea of blood, trying to find a way out and then a laser from a soldier’s gun was pointed to my head. I surrendered.”

Ashwad left Kuala Lumpur for Istanbul with Awani’s cameraman, Shamsulkamal Abdul Latip, 43. They left on 23 May and from Istanbul they went to Antalya where they boarded the Mavi Marmara for the journey that was to take them into a killing-field on the ship that took nine (now 10) lives and wounded at least 45.

The Mavi Mamara was leading a flotilla of seven with 10,000 tons of construction material, school equipment, some food and clothing as humanitarian aid for more than 100,000 Gazans made homeless by the regime’s heartless invasion of the Hamas governed finger-tip territory the Palestinians of Gaza call home underneath Israeli law.

For the past three years they lived under a siege applied by the regime and Egypt. Even the meanest medical supply and food could not go through the tunnels that had been dug by the Gazans and bombed to bits by Israel.

The twelve Malaysian volunteers were taken to Ashdod, fed pieces of bread and water, later evicted to Jordan where they were being waited for by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Anifah Aman. Anifah fumed.

Back home Malaysia was preparing for a special parliamentary session to discuss the event and what steps to take. A number of small protests were held on June 1 mainly to deliver a memorandum to the US Embassy. A large demonstration is to be held on Friday, June 4. Parliament sits to discuss the matter on Monday, June 7.

The volunteers taken to Ashdod have mostly been evicted. About 50 have been detained against a fury of protests that threatens to turn Israel into an outcast terrorist state the likes of which should never have soiled humanity.

Ashwad said there were naval crafts, a ship and three helicopters that Israel had sent to invade and capture the flotilla. Other reports say Israel had sent 700 commandos. There were also 700 volunteers in the desperate humanitarian attempt to secure the basic needs of the Gazans living beneath Israel’s tyranny.

Ashwad continued his story. He had the laser of a commando gun on his head and he put up both his hands. Israeli soldiers bound him and he was ordered to stay on the deck.
The Mavi Marmara was then forced to sail to the port of Ashdod. All of the volunteers were later taken to a prison at Vir Sheba.

Ashwad said, it took 12 hours for the captive volunteers to be taken to Ashdod and then to the prison. They were given some water, but no food.

At the prison food was bread and greens, Ashwad said. ‘We were yelled at, humiliated and generally treated as common prisoners.’

The Mavi Marmara carried no weapons. Ashwad recounted that in self-defense some volunteers had used whatever pieces of iron on the ship that was within reach, after the Israelis had opened fire.

The volunteers mainly used water from the fire-hoses. They had not anticipated such a gruesome brute action and even if they did they would not have brought weapons with them. It was a mission to save lives, not to destroy any.

Humanity has been maimed, again, by a regime that has said and would be saying still, that it has the right to self-defense. Against everybody that disagrees? Is that it? ---a. ghani ismail, 3 June, 2010



Demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur on June 4. Parliament will sit on Israel's attack of the Mavi Marmara and the Gaza seige on Monday, June 7.

Please Get Justice Out of Jail for Aminulrasyid

Has justice been thrown into jail following the killing in the early hours of 26 April of a schoolboy, Aminul Rasyid Amzah, in Section 11, Shah Alam, who took his sister’s car for a ride into town? He was barely 15.

Police want us to believe he and his schoolmate, Azamuddin Omar, 15, were possibly robbers who kept a machete in the car. Can that at all be true?

We were quickly told not to politicize the event. Did it become political because reports on the macabre event were written by the Pas Member of Parliament for Shah Alam, Khalid Samad, in his blog from a day after the Barisan Nasional had won in the Hulu Selangor by-election?

Khalid Samad’s reports based on witnesses' accounts showed the boy was already shot dead before he could reverse the car he had driven to threaten the lives of the armed policemen.

The IGP, Tan Sri Musa Hasan, by insisting that the boy had actually reversed the car as reported by the police personnel involved, caused the public distress to turn into indignation and logging more than 35,000 hits on Google search in six days (by 1st May) compared to 20,800 hits for single mother, Norizan Salleh, police had shot five times on Oct. 30, 2009.

She is still seeking for justice.

Could it be possible justice is in jail and we would need to aggress to free it before it can be done?

The number of people who died in police custody and those shot on the streets have been rising too high for anxiety to remain subdued in this terribly apathetic society.

In the recent killing of the schoolboy the CPO of Selangor, afraid the incident would become a major political issue, was reported to have said the policemen would be charged for murder. He asked, “Isn’t that enough?”

In other words, he admitted a serious crime had occurred and the execution of the schoolboy would be dealt with by the court of law, himself wishing to avoid a public probe some people had suggested before the outgoing IGP was taken to the crime scene and driven the six kilometers of the car chase (or it could have been merely 1.2 kilometers) that ended with a shot to the back of Amirul’s head.

The deadly shot was one of four from close range, or so we were told by a witness. Many more shots were aimed at the car tyres on the way to the fatal end, said police.

In short, the IGP, in his over-zealous I-take-care-of-my-men display, which he denied was his motive, had wittingly or unwittingly confused the already heated public indignation.

Musa Hasan was widely reported to have threatened to take his men off the streets “if that’s what you want!”

If not for the quick move by the Home Ministry, he could have set the public indignation into popular agitation in the streets and the stage would be made for uproar and riots, led by the Opposition, or who else? Aminulrasyid can be our son or our kid brother, you see.

What did the Home Minister do?

He suggested an eight-man panel to run an open inquest, the panel chaired by his deputy and the members would be drawn from the public, which is good for securing the people a true picture of what happened on the fatal night for the schoolboy who took his sister’s Proton Iswara at midnight to help a friend in Section 7 whose motorbike had a puncture. Or he and a friend could have gone to meet a couple of school girls. Should that matter?

It is clearly visible from the above that members of the Malaysian public who had troubled themselves to read what Khalid Samad had contributed on his blog would have formed a clear picture in their heads and cannot believe the police story. Hence, a panel-inquest becomes necessary before the trial.

The IGP should hold his breath for a little and ask himself how the Police Force is perceived. A few years ago his predecessor, Tun Haniff Omar, had written to say that his wife would have him armed with a pump-gun even if he was going out at night to attend a meeting in town.

In recent years the Force had stood as a tight pack to reject wholesale the suggestion to impose on it the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC), the suggested Commission standing as a loud statement of slackness, corruption and lack of discipline occurring in the police department and causing public anxiety.

Tan Sri Musa Hasan may believe society has decided he is a failure and so he is extra sensitive as his days at the helm dim.

That is not true. Most people are also appreciative of the police in general, many of whom have died for us in the line of duty. But the gratitude and appreciation cannot mean you are above criticism and cannot be called to book.

People are generally aware the Police Force has had to recruit and train large numbers, making discipline difficult to invest in the short training.

We have also been told when some senior officers from the district level up are transferred, they take with them their “boys”, causing the district to loose accumulated contacts and information.

It seems like central authority in the department has been undermined and if that is true a commission is called for to investigate and to study the dysfunction and then to recommend the means available to secure and rehabilitate the department.

It is possible the department may have become too large and should be split into several departments, some placed under different Ministries since their functions may not properly fit into the role of the Police Force.

In a society that’s aiming to become a developed society in ten years lugging public apathy as a crucifix, we can certainly do without sensitivities overwhelming the meager efforts made by the conscientious to get justice out of jail and reaffirmed as a strong value in this would-soon-be First World nation.

Amirulrasyid is now dead. The boy falls under the Child’s Act and had he been booked for the traffic offences he was guilty for, his name and identity would have been withheld by the law.

But police officers shot him in the head about 100 meters from his house, a decent suburban environment that had bred a boy who wanted to become an astronaut, but who had learned to drive years before he was eligible for a driving licence.

The Selangor CPO had said only one of his men had discharged his firearm. Well, what is there to say about that other than to acclaim his great talent!

Whether you like it or not, the police, instead of becoming people-friendly, which was the policy objective some years ago, has become increasingly nasty and is already a monster. A Royal Commission will be required to tame it.

Now will someone please free justice from jail and bring the crime to its court?---a. ghani ismail, 2 May, 2010

Is Hulu Selangor Anwar's Graveyard?

As a casualty, Party Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) would be in intensive care on this last day of the campaign for Hulu Selangor (24 April), meaning Zaid Ibrahim, even if he was defensible in the rogue politics that’s gripped this yawn into a sudden wake-up, would still be a cadaver when the results are announced tomorrow night.

But it is Anwar Ibrahim, the immense and overwhelmingly important political ego who lost his chance to throttle Najib Tun Razak for the run to the sun who is mangled, beyond any compare in the history of Malaysia.

Hulu Selangor was Anwar’s harvest. Now it is his graveyard. He does what he likes and he’s clearly lost his appeal.

Distanced even by his personal physician, Dr.Halili, after a shocking fall from grace that is shrinking the PKR into the smallest component of the Pakatan in parliament, Anwar should have known better than to grab at straws to clobber Najib who has made it to the top and is doing better by the day.

What did he expect to gain by using APCO as a bogey to spin Najib’s One Malayia into a by-product of One Israel? That is really hard to say.

Other than effecting echoes of the street-gangs that follow him in his campaign trail, Anwar’s Israelite bogey is limp, especially against the accusation that he has been Paul Wolfowitz’s boy and Wolfowitz was an architect of the Iraq War people here condemn as grand homicide and connect it to the Zionists and to Israel.

When the bogey is repeated day and night in Hulu Selangor while PKR members leave the party, it is Anwar who tumbles. Along with him falls Yusuf al-Qaradhawi whose name he now employs like it is his fervent prayer that the religious scholar will pop out from somewhere to tell us that he (Anwar) had never been a sinner.

Truth is, Anwar had left his flock of followers in ABIM and his supporters in the society by a sudden twist in his game-play when he joined Umno to become a Deputy Minister in 1981.

Many of those he played out before are still alive and have not forgotten the egophiliac, a factor that could have been a reason for why the Pas members, who had come in force on April 17 (nomination day) had then stayed out of the campaign until April 23.

It is apparent the Pas president, Abdul Hadi Awang, had left it to Nik Aziz Nik Mat, the party’s spiritual leader, to decide. Nik Aziz returned home from Mecca on April 22 and he decided the party should join the Pakatan’s campaign, which happened on April 23 two days before polling.

The rot is stacked on Anwar in Hulu Selangor where once he had been the favored choice for national leadership. The candidate of his choice, Zaid Ibrahim, had been merely a victim of an extraordinary circumstance he had not been clear about.

It's Selangor MB, Khalid Ibrahim, who has kept the PKR remaining alive in the state. He gave the lower income groups free water, he gave people who stayed on Temporary Occupation Licence (TOL) land for 15 years or more leasehold grants and he has recently relieved those who bought houses or shops in stalled township or housing projects from paying quit-rent.

These go a long way to win over voters. But it is generally known Anwar and his former secretary, Azmin Ali, want Khalid out.

DAP legend, Lim Kit Siang, had said Pakatan would need 85 percent of the Chinese votes in Hulu Selangor to secure Zaid. But the Chinese, who are 26 percent of the voters in the constituency, had retained Kuala Kubu Bharu for the MCA in 2008 and would not want to lose that edge in the arithmetic of communal power-sharing.

The number of Malay voters has been increasing more than the increases in Chinese and Indian voters in Hulu Selangor.

Politically it is the Pas that has the greater potential in the constituency, the numbers of its members having risen from less that 1,000 in 2008 to reach about 7,300 today.

The sum total of that weighs heavily against Zaid. He will lose tomorrow (25 April), by what appears on my screen as probably between 800 and 1,000 votes, with less than 10 hours left for campaigning.

But while Zaid can still give it another try in a different constituency, Anwar may have to kiss himself goodbye and once again become a cause celebre should he fail in court to undo the knot Saiful Bukhari has tied him in. Saiful was another one of his aides.

It’s sad. The truth, taken without a dash of fiction, is sadder still.

But in the night of April 24, at the Kuala Kubu Bharu stadium where the Pas spiritual leader talked, PAKATAN troopers came in a force of 60,000 mainly from Selangor and Perak. Most bathed in the illuminations of the stadium lights as they listened intently to the old man of Kelantan, Nik Aziz Nik Mat, telling them the Devil is Umno and if they wish for a better life in Islamic garb they should vote Zaid Ibrahim.



Anwar arrived late and as he spoke thousands began to walk out of the stadium, a few saying aloud they have to get out of the little town pronto or it would take them the rest of the night to get to the highway. Bon voyage! ---a. ghani ismail, 24 April, 2010

____________

Result of the by-election of Sunday, April 25 2010: Barisan Nasional won the Hulu Selangor parliamentary seat by a majority of 1,725. Its candidate, P. Kamalanathan from the MIC, polled 24,997 votes to defeat PKR’s Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, who garnered 23,272 votes. A total of 48,935 people or 75.87% of the eligible voters cast their ballots.

SUNDOWN AT MID-DAY IN HULU SELANGOR

It’s sundown at midday after nominations on April 17 for the Hulu Selangor by-election on 25th April, the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), looking the likely winner even if it had lost its quest and is becoming a rubble. The party crumpled what remained of its bearings by parading its wunderman, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, through Kuala Kubu Bharu looking like this



The serious business of choosing a parliamentary representative for the larger-than-Malacca constituency is now a comedy.

Hulu Selangor had been ravaged by over-construction in the failed attempt to create another Klang Valley in Selangor. It badly needed a committed person for the people to place their faith in.

In the picture above is Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, former de facto Law Minister in a crazier-than-fiction outfit to resemble a Chinese culture hero, Justice Pau.

The legend was aired over the TV in Malaysia from immediately after Abdullah Ahmad Badawi assumed the premiership in Oct. 2003, with someone declaring through advertising spaces in Chinese newspapers that the former regime was “corrupt to the core.”

Whatever is the motive of the hilarity in Kuala Kubu Bharu on April 17, Zaid, who had left Umno and joined the PKR, is being cut down to size from immediately after the nominations were closed.

By what looked like a freakish storm following the sundown, he was struck as having a drinking problem, a man of questionable moral values who approved gambling and may own a racehorse or two.

On the same night, Anwar Ibrahim, the maverick head-starter of the bash at the Indonesian Reformasi in Malaysia, said Zaid admitted he had been fond of drinks in his younger days. Zaid was also said to have been found guilty of vote-buying when he was in Umno.

Anwar drew an audience of less than 500 in Kerling on the night of April 17, after nominations. He should have attracted not less than 5,000.

Hardly any Chinese (other than newsmen and photographers) were in the audience on the field beside the Kerling Hindu temple.

In Kerling is a string of Chinese New Villages that run right to the hot-spring of the little villages that had once been a Red Area.

While most of the speakers last night were PKR and DAP Indians, the number of Indians in the audience was less than 30.

Anwar had drawn only a little more that 300 in Serendah, it was reported and the PKR drew only about 400 in Asam Kumbang New Village, Kuala Kubu Bharu on 15 April.

What’s going on is simple to grasp. The party that had shaken the Barisan Nasional in the 8th March 2008 general-elections has lost sense of its quest and is crumbling from the top down.

The PKR is not much more than Anwar’s vehicle to grab federal power, which he tried to do before September 16, 2008 and failed, the party appearing like it is quashed on the canvas as a result and senselessly muttering ‘Reformasi, Reformasi’, but for what?

Now, in the hilarity of its joyous mood to walk into Kuala Kubu Bharu and in Hulu Selangor as the champion of the recent past, the PKR cannot escape looking like it is punch-drunk to have dressed and dolled-up Zaid Ibrahim in the Chinese opera costume with the loose beard hanging down like its the curtain.

What's the suggestion then?

The suggestion is to restructure form and content because the quest for Reformasi has long been dead and what the Pakatan had been lugging was a cause to free Anwar from prison and since, to keep him from going back in.

That would be at least a mite different from Reformasi or Doi Moi.

And it should be the likes of Dr. Syed Hussin Ali or Dr.Xavier Jeyakumar at the lead for a chance at a two-party system and for Proportional Representation (PR).

What about the Barisan Nasional (BN)?

It has been behaving like in a circus act over the selection of its candidate but now its candidate, P. Kamalanathan, MIC Information Chief, will win on April 25 where the BN had lost in 2008 by only 198 votes. The ruling coalition secured all three state seats in the constituency. –a. ghani ismail, 18 April, 2010.

PKR AND PAKATAN IN A MIDSUMMER NIGHTMARE

Tossed into Alice’s Wonderland on 8 March 2008 by a fluke of fate, Anwar’s vehicle for his ride to power has now come loose, becoming a serious liability to its partners two years after the great surprise at the polls that brought in the absurdity.

It’s been departure time for scores of party members the past one month, with former party secretary-general, Salehuddin Hashim, leading the way and in his train three MPs have quit the party, another sacked and several more adrift.

While many from some parts of the world placed much faith in Anwar Ibrahim and the promises he made for reform, the facts say his outfit had been overwhelmed by his secretaries who struggled for influence among themselves, the losers leaving the party to publicly scorn Anwar and his favorites.

There was never a chance for the party to build a base for coherence and cohesion so it can survive the violence of a Punch and Judy puppet show.

The PKR was doomed from birth, riding piggyback on the Pas into the 1990 general elections and coming to an abrupt halt in 2004. It was wiped out at the polls, leaving Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah, as the sole survivor in Parliament, winning as caretaker of Anwar’s parliamentary base, Permatang Pauh in Penang.

The pendulum swung to an extreme in the 8 March 2008 general elections. Seeing Umno and the Barisan Nasional (BN) were unable to remove Abdullah Ahmad Badawi from the helm, the people moved to vote against Badawi, denying the BN the two-third majority.

With the Opposition only 30 less than the BN in Parliament, Anwar became inspired to apply haste in politics and declared he had enough BN lawmakers willing to cross court and join the Pakatan to form the new government on September 16, 2008 .

It failed and it backfired, Anwar self-bashed to a pulp.

It was impossible for the PKR to recover since. Anwar and the Opposition could only hope for Najib Tun Razak to slump before he could succeed Badawi.

Najib made it. Then he moved swiftly to turn the tables on Anwar and the Pakatan. He recovered the state of Perak and in a series of offensives he left the Pakatan in distress in Selangor and Penang.

In Kedah the Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) is often sick and has not delivered anything worth a mention in the two years he has been chief executive.

In Kelantan the stoic old survivor, Nik Aziz Nik Mat, has finally gotten himself linked to a possible set of graft charges involving his son-in-law whom he appointed as the CEO of a state company he chaired himself.


In Penang Lim Guan Eng as Chief Minister has been alleged to have made a regulation giving him the power to withdraw contracts given out by the state or state agency, without having to give any reason for his actions.

In other words, he was said to have taken to himself extraordinary powers for someone demanding accountability and transparency in government.

The opposition has also been showing gross incompetence, lack of experience and silly arrogance. Some could not handle the simple taste of minimal power.

In many places it has been a lark the likes of which we have never seen or heard before – a powershoku that had come in with the 8 March 2008 electoral tsunami bringing to Malaysia a real life staging of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, featuring some who had done nothing more than ferrying mineral water from the shops to the election hot-tents and were amply rewarded for that.

When some councilors at the district and municipal levels were dropped there was the news in several online newspapers that one of these had ingested a weed-killer. The news item was withdrawn many hours later.

The truth is bizarre. The Opposition had been as surprised as anyone else with the 8 March 2008 election results and the PKR and the DAP were not prepared to run state governments and to place selected members as councilors at district and municipal levels.

Why would the DAP and PKR now want town council elections is yet another kinky curio when the DAP’s Magister, Lim Kit Siang, had recently wrote against the proposal, possibly because the party and its strange sidekick, PKR, do not have cadre outfits to fill in the positions with people who know what to do.

Other than the socialists in the PKR, hardly any of the party members had been in touch with farmers’, smallholders’ or fishermen's associations, meaning they have no idea of the tensions faced by these sectors and to exploit the tensions.

The same is partially true for the Pas, which is probably why the party failed to hold the rural electorates in many states.

It would now become pertinent to ask who among the members of the PKR (other than the socialists) and the Pas have been keeping touch with workers’ unions in the urban?

What, therefore, is the Pakatan about other than to make Anwar Ibrahim the boss over Putrajaya? Why would we want to do that?

If it is about Reformasi, we need to ask what have they done in that direction the past two years other than talk in road-shows and in the coffee-shops?

If it is about the chance to incur a two-party system we have to know at which point had that been a viable option since 8 March 2008?

Is Anwar managerially substantial or is he the same now as he had been as a minister and Umno leader, with many of his boys forming a cackle of menacing husbanded power who misbehaved while pretending to be the champions of Islam.

It’s bottoms up! There will have to be shifts of the paradigms and of the chimes for Malaysia to progress in the processes of change, modernization, development and integration. In the meantime, it is Najib who is widely perceived as doing very well as a leader. ---a. ghani ismail, 8 March, 2010

On A Scale Of Justice (Or The Matter of I21(1A)

The writing below was to have been Marina's column in The Star. It was spiked because the paper had gotten into some trouble over a writing on Islam. Marina wrote in her blog to express concern, saying it is the Printing Presses and Publications Act (1984) that's the threat. In the column she had referred to the 1988 Amendment we know as 121(1A) which resulted in the country having two sets of laws and two judiciaries.

There are other laws, federal and state, that matter as well, even contempt of the mufti's orders and of Islam for options of the violence. Marina must have also known the Muslim authorities have discovered fire, long after Prometheus of course, but they still keep at burning books and newspapers. It's a tradition started sometime when Baghdad was the heart of the Muslim Empire before Hulagu's takeover in 1258 AD. Time hardly moved since, other than by stretching.

So here is Marina's spiked column - from rantingsbymm.blogspot.com



When we want to compete with anyone in any field, we seek those who are better than us. And we keep going until finally we are recognised as the best. For example, a tennis player starts at the unranked bottom and tries to play and win against better players until, finally, there is nobody to beat.

We do not, however, insist that everybody comes down to our level or to play badly in order for us to win. This is what puzzles me about the Shariah courts in our country.

In 1988, a clause was inserted into our Constitution that has been interpreted as having erected a “Berlin Wall” between the Shariah and the civil courts. Basically, Article 121(1A) said “the courts referred to in Clause (1) shall have no jurisdiction in respect of any matter within the jurisdiction of the Shariah courts.” This has caused untold problems because real life sometimes dictates that some issues cross over both jurisdictions. But leave that aside for a moment.

Although the new clause did not say it, there are some people who are of the view that the Shariah court is superior to the civil courts simply because Shariah law is deemed of a higher order than civil laws.

This is because apparently God made Shariah laws while mere human beings made the civil laws. Never mind the fact that human beings have been changing Shariah laws over the years, for instance, by loosening laws that protected women from losing all their property to their divorced husbands.

Shariah Laws


Like other laws in this country, Shariah laws have to be drafted, tabled and passed through our various lawmaking bodies, whether at the State or Federal levels. This process leaves a lot of human fingerprints all over them.

Civil laws are drafted, tabled and passed through Parliament. The difference is that at the tabling stage, they have to be debated before they are passed. The quality of the debate may be sometimes wanting but debated they are. This process provides some sort of ‘quality control’ over the laws so that they are hopefully current, reflect realities and are just.

The same does not hold true of Shariah laws. When they get tabled at State Excos, non-Muslims do not participate because there is the notion that they cannot partake in any such debate.

That leaves only the Muslim Excos, few of whom are women. This means that if a bill affects women, the opinions of the female minority in the Exco can be ignored.

Furthermore, most people are ignorant about their religion and tend to leave these matters to those they believe know best. Thus if the State Mufti or religious adviser says it’s a good law, they are unlikely to challenge him. Thus are religious laws passed without due scrutiny until something happens, such as when someone gets convicted of a Shariah crime and punishment is meted out.

Who knew that people could be caned for drinking, or for having a baby out of wedlock until the recent cases of Kartika who drank some beer and the three women who gave birth out of wedlock?

Not only were these laws not debated when they were being made, unlike civil laws they can’t be debated afterwards either. According to some, to do so is akin to arguing with God. (There are, however, some who think that God welcomes such arguments just so that He can prove He is right).

Superior Laws

If one believes that Shariah laws are superior to civil laws, should they not be held to higher standards? Should they not be subjected to more rigorous debate than civil laws out of fear that they may be unjust?

If Shariah courts are deemed superior to civil courts, should not their processes be more transparent and efficient? How is it that there are innumerable women having to suffer because Shariah court orders to their former husbands to pay child maintenance cannot be enforced?

How is it also that we suddenly hear about women being caned without any information about the processes they went through? Did they have the benefit of legal representation and heard in an open court? If they did, who were their lawyers and what defence did they mount? On whose behalf was justice served?

I have no problems with Shariah laws if their foundation is justice, equality and non-discrimination for all, even non-Muslims. But when their intent, processes and enforcement are unfair, they only give the impression that Islam is unjust and discriminatory. Surely to give such an image of Islam is a sin. –--
3 March 2010 rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/

* Marina Mahathir is a columnist with The Star.