LAMENTATIONS OVER ENGLISH FOR MATHS AND SCIENCE

Has Parents Any Say In Our Education Policy?

Ghoulish in the way educational policies are crafted by politicians in Malaysia has dogged parents, teachers and children once again. This time, when after much ado a lot want the teaching of mathematics and science in English (PPSMI) to be continued with choices given to parents, the Cabinet reversed the policy in a flourish six years after the policy was begun.

A host of students were sent reeling, the three in the montage above representing many more this writer had met in the several weeks before the decision was announced.

Since the parents are divided about this and students who have learned mathematics, science and many more elective subjects in English want to continue with it, the Cabinet could have opted to let the parents make the choices.

There was a time when parents could apply to the school to teach a subject of their choice, needing only 15 parents to clinch the deal with the school. A posse should be quickly organized to search for that parents’ right in education. It must have run away.

The PPSMI policy reversal is not catastrophic as some may wish to suggest it is. But it clearly is a disappointing turn of policy for a lot of middle-class and urban families.

It should be noted this is not merely about teaching and learning of mathematics and science in English. Some elective industrial and vocational subjects are also taught in English, the reason stated being mainly because of the lack of supportive reading material in Bahasa Malaysia.

This is not about language learning, which the Ministry shall attempt to enhance and shall recruit more than 13,500 English Language and Literature teachers.

After that is understood, it remains rather of a big waste to relieve the society of a policy that had worked well in urban schools but not for schools in the rural, a matter of fact that applies for almost all subjects and for the whole of the teaching-learning process generally.

Gunnar Myrdal’s study of the rural-urban divide had made that clear.

Urban and rural performances in the learning process cannot be expected to be the same. The teaching-learning occur in different life-spaces, the same as between the better-endowed suburbs and the ghettoes, or with the inner-city schools.

After RM 4 billion have been invested in the venture over six years and every student I asked want to continue learning the subjects in English, the writer will have to register his own feeling of going south following the cast-away decision that need not have been as black-and-white as the Cabinet had decided.

It looks done, especially after it is clear very few teachers were trained to cover the need in the past five years.

But teachers can be trained if there’s the political will and with a mighty perhaps, enough parents can be brought to hold the pitch and ransom the Ministry to be accommodative and let those who want to continue with the subjects in English do so.

Former Prime Minister, Tun Pak Lah, declared the policy was a failure. It was not. It merely lagged in the rural, something we can find happening with subjects taught in Bahasa Malaysia and especially with mathematics and science.

Trouble brewed inside of the political nuances, which happened even in Proton, whence a whole chunk of valuable shares in Augusta were sold for One Euro or RM4.50, the same shares sold later for more than RM300 million.

Tun Pak Lah, as Prime Minister, also wrote off the Smart Schools project Tun Dr. Mahathir had started. Pak Lah merely said the money would be better spent to upgrade hundreds of schools.

We would not be facing the drastic decision had that been done satisfactorily during his tenure.

The three girls in the montage are from the first cluster of Smart Schools Mahathir had wanted to pursue, i.e. the Sekolah Seri Bintang (formerly Sekolah Bukit Bintang) located in Shamelin Garden, Cheras.

Asked, they replied they are from a Smart School (Sekolah Bistari) but when I followed through they said Smart Schools are schools where teaching and learning are electronic-aided.

Electronic-aided teaching-learning is less than 50 percent of what a Smart School should be and I suggested they get into the net and search for Smart School for a start.

When the concept is understood I told them they should get organized and aggress for a proper Smart School development. I had been a teacher, you see.

So the question should be asked as to whether or not we had been heading South in education because of the political blur and have we now done a leap South again?

Well, it’s about one and another policy and facility gone and we’ll need to wait to see if the new initiatives will show any better performances in our schools after 2012. --- a. ghani ismail, 11 July 2009

APA OBJEKTIF SYARIAT?

DARI ROMA PULANG KE LINTANG PUKANG –
Bicara mengenai usul Objektif Syariat Presiden Pas, Haji Hadi Awang



Kerana President Pas, Haji Abdul Hadi Awang, mempunyai dasar dan ukurannya ketika menegur Sisters-in-Islam (SIS) supaya berhati-hati dalam mengejar reformasi Syariat untuk memperjuangkan hak wanita dalam Islam, beliau terus dibalun sebagai seseorang yang menidakkan kebebasan berbicara mengenai agama dalam ruang awam (public domain).

Undang-undang dan pengadilan, sama ada Islam atau sekular, tentu sekali merupakan bidang pengkhususan yang tidak membolehkan orang sebarangan mengusul bicara mengenainya agar umum tidak akan kekeliruan. Ia terhad untuk mereka yang terpelajar dan/atau terlatih dalam bidangnya.

Namun, mereka yang tidak senang dengan Islam terus menerus menolak Syariat sebagai sesuatu sistem undang-undang dan pengadilan yang patut dilindungi daripada kritik dan tuntutan sombrono.

Mereka bersikap seolah-olah Islam dan Syariatnya adalah kolot dan boleh diperlakukan seperti sampah.

Ini adalah gejala dan gejala ini merupakan sesuatu yang kelahiran daripada tujuan Reformasi di Malaysia.

Syariat mengutarakan budi bahasa yang berlemah-lembut (rifq), berbahasa dengan manis dan meringangkan (husn al-khulq) dan supaya berihsan dalam segala perhubungan dan perbuatan.

Maka kita perlu menerangkan dulu segala sesuatu yang asas berkenaan dengan dasar dan perhitungan kita kenapa kita tidak mengharuskan perbicaraan sombrono mengenai Syariat.

Tidak ramai orang Islam di Malaysia mengetahui apakah Objektif Syariat (Maqasid al-Syariah) kerana subjek itu, walau telah diperkenalkan dalam Pengajian Islam di Universiti Malaya sejak awal tahun 1960an, ia kurang menjadi buah perbincangan.

Objektif Syariat adalah kebaikan (masalih atau benefits) yang menjadi tujuan undang-undang Islam.

Lima kebaikan yang utama dan yang menjadi asas (dharuriyat al-khamsa) yang oleh Haji Hadi diungkapkan dalam Ucapan Dasarnya pada Muktamar Pas ke 55 baru-baru ini, adalah rumusan Imam al-Ghazali.

Objektif

Al-Ghazali mengutarakan bahawa lima kebaikan yang asas ini, yakni iman, nyawa, akal, zuriat dan harta, adalah tujuan Syariat yang utama dan yang tidak boleh dileka-lekakan oleh sesebuah masyarakat Muslim.

Ringkasnya, objektif Syariat bertujuan membentang dan melindungi kebaikan masyarakat yang maksima (the greatest public good) dan Dharuriyyat al-khamsa adalah lima keperluan asas dalam cara hidup Islam.

Siasah dalam Islam, secara yang unggul, justeru, adalah untuk memperjuangkan objektif-objektif (maqasid) Shariat dan Maqasid al-Syariat diberi kepada tiga bahagian yang besar, yakni:

a) Lima yang Asas (Dharuriyat al-Khamsa) – lindungan dan kemajuan (i) keimanan, (ii) nyawa dan anggota tubuh, (iii) kemajuan akal (intelek), (iv) zuriat atau lineage, (v) harta (property).

b) Hajiyyat, atau segala pembangunan dan kemajuan komplimentari pada yang lima perkara tadi.

Umpamanya, mendirikan sekolah adalah tergolong dalam kategori Dharuriyyat, dan meningkatkan keselesesaan persekolahan dengan ada bilik darjah berhawa dingin dan beroleh semua alat elektronik pembantu pembelajaran adalah Hajiyyat.

c) Tahsiniyyat, atau perhiasan yang diingini. Bila sudah masyarakat dan Negara beroleh pembangunan dan kemajuan yang asas dan yang komplimentari barulah perbelanjaan dapat diperuntukkan supaya mewujudkan sekitaran yang lebih cantik dan selesa. Ini kategori Tahsiniyyat, atau perhiasan.

Maqasid al-Shariat, justeru, menjadi dasar untuk sebarang tindakan reformasi Syariat dan sekaligus menjadi jadual nilai masyarakat Islam untuk menyesuaikan diri dengan zaman.

Penerangan Asas

Yang di atas tadi hanyalah penerangan yang asas. Kita akan dapati nanti susunan al-Ghazali yang meletakkan dasar Maqasid al-Syariat yang pada lima perkara seperti yang tersebut di atas akan diubah secara yang menyeluruh oleh ibn Taimiyya.

Pendekatan ibn Taimiyya, yakni Bapa Reformasi Islam, itulah diteruskan sampai sekarang oleh mujtahid Yusuf al-Qaradhawi.

Maqasid al-Syariah bukan satu undang-undang Islam atau sesuatu dasar yang berkuatkuasa sebagai satu undang-undang. Ia hanyalah satu perutusan yang diterima oleh umat Islam sebagai dasar dalam Usul Fiqh dan laku sebagai satu asas untuk segala perbicaraan berkaitan undang-undang Islam, atau mengenai Syariat secara umum.

Saya percaya itu sajalah yang menjadi maksud Haji Hadi Awang, yakni untuk mengutarakan pada masyarakat supaya menghurmati objektif-objektif Syariat bila melangkah untuk mengejar perubahan atau pembaharuan Syariat.

Apakah Maqasid al-Shariah ini berguna, atau masih laku dalam masyarakat di Malaysia yang sudah menjadi industrial dan berkotaraya, justeru, merupakan perkara-perkara yang bolehlah dibangkitkan dalam perbincangan.

Yang kurang disenangi hanya sikap acuh-tak-acuh sebilangan orang Islam dan warga Malaysia maupun yang terus bersikap bermusuhan seolah-olah mereka hendak menghapuskan Islam yang mereka pandang sebagai satu kepercayaan yang sudah jauh ketinggalan zaman.

Apakah mereka telah beroleh satu cara hidup yang istimewa? Di mana letak contoh budaya, tamadun dan cara hidup itu?

Satu garis retak yang sudah lama menanti belah telah membentuk konflik terbuka. Yang belum dapat dapat dipastikan adalah apa mungkin SIS akan membuka langkah supaya bertarung dalam gelanggang usul figh ini. ----a.ghani ismail, 1 July, 2009

PAS' MOON IS SPLIT!

PAS PATRIMONY SPAT - THE SPLITTING OF THE MOON


The moon is split. It’s the clout of aging what’s hit the party, not the suggested Unity Government which is a non-issue, the tantrum this time going so far as to tell the deputy president, Nasharuddin Mat Isa, to resign as MP of Bachok, Kelantan, and get lost from Pas altogether, a wounding that will be hard to plaster.

Nasharuddin is from Negeri Sembilan and therefore a guest of Nik Aziz, 78, the Kelantan Pas chief and Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) who is also the murshidul am (spiritual leader) of the party.

The irascible stoical savant insists he is the captain of the ship and wants Nasharuddin cast overboard, opening a way for mutiny.

Will the ship sink this time? Or is the event only a splitting of the moon deliberately designed to issue an anticipated conflict to remove the distressing distortion of the power hierarchy in Pas?

For how can the party continue if there’s a sustained usurpation of the president’s power and authority?

The party has an elected president and a murshidul am or spiritual guide who is chosen by the Dewan Ulama (Council of Scholars) from an elected group of 15.

He can only be removed by two-thirds of his peers in the Council and therefore, can be a scary figure of power should he also become a state leader and chief executive like Nik Aziz Nik Mat in Kelantan.

Complaints about Nik Aziz performing against the party’s resolutions had consistently surfaced from months after he became Menteri Besar in 1990.

The difficulties arose from the personality, the positions he held and the poorly defined role and authority of the murshidul am – reasons enough to cause gaping holes to appear in the ship’s belly.

Then there’s the fact that Kelantan, which has been the host and fortress of Pas all through the party’s history, is losing the special status and privileges.

Pas, after the sudden surge into national stature in 1999, is now standing with more than one million members from about 60,000 before 1999. That expansion can only be described as an explosion.

While from the early days the party had rooted in Kelantan and expanded merely to the predominantly Malay states of the peninsular, the Pas has now become national and is only requiring to seed in Sabah to contest Umno as a whole.

Temper, personality and character of the leadership must change to accept the new membership profile which has outgrown the old rural and religious-school restrictions.

Pas now embraces an impressive stack of scholars, professional and technocrats.

Resulting from Nik Aziz’s remarkable outburst is a certain gloom. While he is widely respected as a party elder and as a symbol of Islamic stoicism (zuhud), the man is ledged in the patriarchal splendor only because of his appeal to moribund values.

The times have changed. So has the country that has long outgrown the rural dominance and is now having to deal with living in sprawling metropolises revealing hysterics of the industrial society that are unknown in all of Islamic history.

Nik Aziz Nik Mat is still seriously encased in his rural habits and he must reevaluate his own effectiveness, especially in trying to secure for Kelantan her special status as a state that’s central in Pas.

Kelantan cannot remain the center of gravity if Pas is to expand and contest Umno nationally.

For weeks after the 55th Pas general assembly (muktamar) whence the president, Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, had delivered an inspiring policy speech, the murshidul am simply derailed the whole of the speech by publicly stomping the party president, the deputy president and the secretary-general.

The “Captain’s” anchorman and oarsmen had lost in the recent party elections. Nik Aziz must be feeling that his days too are numbered.

For him there’s no escape. He must immediately prepare for his retirement if the Pas is to remain a credible alternative to Umno or as an effective partner in a Unity Government.

Hadi’s idea of the Unity Government was only a suggested means to overcome the political distresses that had arisen from the 8 March 2008 general elections.

It is no more than a loose suggestion many regard as a good idea. ----a. ghani ismail, 20 June, 2009

PETRA AND DIN ABUSE CYBER CIVILITY

EVERY DOG MAY HAVE ITS DAY BUT SOME MAY BE GOING MAD
Or

IS RUSDI MUSTAPHA PASQUALE?



Less than a week after I wrote to say a lot of people have had enough of the frantic indiscipline in the rank-and-file of the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), we have Rocky Bru writing today to tell us what well-known fugitive, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, and the new-fellow-on-the blog, Din Marican, had done to journalist, Rusdi Mustapha, who works for Najib Tun Razak. Rocky Bru described it as “something rotten”

The duo, both closely associated with Anwar Ibrahim, have been flexing their muscles often for nothing, this time alleging Rusdi Mustapha is an anonymous blogger who calls himself Pasquale and who is pro-Najib

Din Marican, quite completely ignorant of the person he is after, billed Rusdi as being Najib’s new spinner, when Rusdi has, in fact, been working for Najib personally for many years. He posted a picture of Rusdi with Rocky Bru (Ahirudin Attan), meaning he wants to take on Rocky for coming to Rusdi’s aid.

Rocky is the president of the Journalists’ Club. Who is this very daring Din Marican?
Will he not get himself torn to pieces as a rot should he want to war?

Raja Petra we all know. Big Dog, in his blog, described Raja Petra as a cyber-anarchist now turning to cyber-terrorism after Raja Petra posted on his blog, Malaysia Today, a picture of Rusdi with his wife and only daughter, thus attracting hate-mail aimed at the family.

It signals a new means of intimidation in the cyber issued by the Anwar camp, a warfare for what we have still to wait to know since this is altogether unexpected and unbecoming of civilized society, but apparently not in the Civil Society Anwar proposes to hoist in Malaysia.

Big Dog, as we know, is a former political secretary and a lawyer. Raja Petra, whatever he has been, is now a self-made fugitive, and Big Dog reminded him nobody had exploited the news about what happened to his son.

But the war is on and it is quite clearly uneven. The weights are certainly against Petra and Din.

It is rather of an inane development which will finally leave their master and mutual friend, Anwar Ibrahim, mired in the self-defeating comic, head down. Anwar is already sinking. The Pas has apparently taken enough of him and his “roughnecks” who seemed to deliberately want to sanctify vulgarity in the New Malaysia.

But who is Din Marican, the suddenly-appearing-maestro-of-some-sort in Anwar Ibrahim’s office?

Why has he returned from a posting in Vietnam several years before? Does anybody know? Can Anwar tell us why if someone were to ask him in parliament?

The writer doesn’t know much about Din Marican other than what he has written of himself in his blog. He was a year my senior in college. He did not luster. I listed his blog in mine and took it out after what he has done to Rusdi today.

Rusdi Mustapha is, of course, a long time journalist who had been with The Star, The NST and then with the Sun before working for Najib in a personal capacity. He was not attached to Najib’s official staff. I do not know if he is now included in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Rusdi is married to a Canadian and has a grown daughter. He lived before in Melawati and is known to all his friends as a very helpful, low-keyed, honest-to-goodness person who cannot be having any of the “great political acumen and charm” of the “big” fellows like Raja Petra and Din Marican who appear to have no qualms about stabbing people in the belly or in the back, even some who took them as friends.

Many are calling their style budaya samseng – “hood culture”, something rather stinking in the PKR and for which it is fast losing popular support, including a hefty chunk of the sympathies for it in the Pas.

After the stunts in Penang on the way to the Penanti by-election I wrote to say the Pas and Dap should “eat” into the PKR. Several days after, the Pas, at its annual general assembly, apparently gave notice the party will want to do exactly that.

Now the duo popped up like rotting sour-sops. The question they must ask themselves is whether or not they and their family members can withstand public scrutiny and cyber-splash. Can they? Isn’t there any vulnerability they may wish to secure?

Raja Petra has quickly posted an apology but said his daughter was threatened. Who threatened her? Rusdi Mustapha? Are you serious?

How about Din Marican? Who is he? What has he ever become to want to war with us?

We are probably going to hear a lot about this Johnny-come-lately and I wonder whether he will want to remain in the country or he will also flee like Raja Petra. LEAVE WIVES AND CHILDREN OUT OF YOUR SLIME. Now Din, go!.--- a.ghani ismail, 9 June 2009.

CAN THE PKR BE SUSTAINED?

ONE FOR THE BRIBE, TWO FOR THE RIDE – A STORY OF PKR’S MAVERICK VICTORY IN PENANTI


After amazing things happened along the road to the Penanti by-election on May 31 including a needless call to bribe one of the three independents who also lost her deposit, the Parti Keadilan Rakyat’s (PKR) glory was still smart even if it rode only on a 46 percent voter-turnout. But how long can the maverick party last?

In terms of discipline the PKR is the weakest in the Pakatan pact of three, some of its members observably power-drunk very early in the day and hardly able to stay out of trouble, even for nothing.

Also apparent is the bite of narcissism some suffer by virtue of being visible in the Blogosphere.

Many simply rile, first flogging the Malays and Islam, then shifting to flogging Umno instead when the heat had touched the danger point.

It’s hardly possible to take the party anymore seriously than a mob.

It is Anwar Ibrahim’s vehicle to power, put together by a chance of history that came and went between 1998 and 2004 and then returned to hit the Barisan Nasional (BN) in the eye on 8 March 2008.

Inside the vehicle are Anwar and his family members, his secretaries and aides, an assortment of NGOs some of which were and are one person-with-a-sidekick shows, members of the former Parti Sosialis Rakyat Malaysia (PSRM) and, if we are to believe the incredible, the bulk could be members of urban groups, collectively the Mat Rempits.

Is this motley crowd socialists, or socialistic? Is there any intention to redistribute income and eradicate urban-rural poverty?

Is there a social policy guaranteeing human and social rights plus a system of taxes and provisions glued to the motive of this lightning-strike political force that has suddenly captured enough power together with the Pas and DAP to deny the BN the two-third majority in parliament?

None as far as the writer is aware.

The PKR is seriously unlike the social democrats of the DAP and the Pas with her Islamic Welfare State.

The PKR is merely about Anwar Ibrahim first and last, with an easily countable number of capable hands.

It started off as a powerhouse in March 2008 with a crisis in the Selangor Mentri Besar’s office and it is still as rough at the edges as when it started.

Can it be sustained in the future after power is acquired over the Federation, which could very well happen in the 13th general elections?

As it is that would be unlikely.

Without an ideological purpose and already showing the inclination to corruption and power-drunkenness, the PKR must necessarily be eaten by the other two in the pact for the Pakatan Rakyat to continue as a viable power-option that can provide for a stable government and for development.

The members of the pact will have to consider other likelihoods if that eating is not possible.

They would even need to think of joining the BN if this country is to be kept from crumpling in the conflicts between the innocence of the lesser endowed and the vicious corruption of the cunning.

PKR has been an endless string of trouble.

Beginning with the spat between Khalid Ibrahim and his Special Officer in the Selangor Menteri Besar’s Office, the party locked into a set of troubles between Anwar’s secretaries, followed by the two state executive councilors in Perak who were caught doing something in a hotel in Penang.

Then came Elizabeth Wong’s difficulty with her boyfriend that will come back later on and the latest is about the two who lunched in Aminah’s house to persuade her to withdraw from contesting in Penanti.

They could have offered her RM80,000 to withdraw. Why did they do that will remain rather of a mystery of power. ---a. ghani ismail, 2 June, 2009

WILL PAS BE LEADING PAKATAN?

ISLAM IS NOT THE DEVIL’S WORKSHOP

or

SOMETHINGS BETTER SAID WILL HAVE TO BE UTTERED




PSRM is a party of academic snobs and the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) is something of a disjointed group of political newbies led by Anwar Ibrahim, journalist, Shamsul Akmar, said. He was in a hurry.

It’s a knee-jerk reaction to my recent postings that say the Pakatan Rakyat is poised to win the next Malaysian general elections, not because it entices but because more and more voters do not want Umno and the Barisan Nasional (BN).

Many among my friends were shell-shocked by the matter-of-fact statement.

Professor Emeritus Dr. Isahak Haron of the UPSI said I was being “mystical”. He expects my reading to be correct again even if it does not appear right at the moment. But the reading here is simple.

The former PSRM is now a component of the PKR, which is the weakest of the trio in Pakatan Rakyat but with the largest number in Parliament (31 seats). Other than the PSRM the PKR is mainly led by a motley of Anwar Ibrahim's secretaries and NGOs. But was the PSRM leadership scholars and snobs?

Other than Kassim Ahmad who had led the party for 18 senseless years and has left it for good, the others I knew in the PSRM were not all scholars nor were they egoistical snobs. Syed Husin Ali and Gamany can’t be snobs.

I concede, however, the party had gone rather wrong after Boestamam (Pak Boes) left the helm to Kassim in 1967, at Kangar, Perlis.

Pak Boes regretted that day, saying he had to retire but the party ought to have chosen someone else.

Since then it was true the new stars of Partai Rakyat (later PSRM) would talk far above the heads of their audiences whereupon my friends and I, including Drs Ahmad Kamar and Dr. Raja Mukhtaruddin Dain, not only distanced ourselves but also launched into a lengthy and extensive study of Islam.

Shamsul, worried about what would happen to the Malays should Pakatan win the 13th general elections, said Pas would be the better choice compared to Parti Keadilan Rakyat. He mentioned several bloggers having trouble over the same question.

People ought to be told Anwar Ibrahim knew he was in deep trouble soon after becoming the number two in Umno in 1993. He suggested I quickly move to the Pas with the late Fadhil Noor at the helm then. Fadhil was Anwar’s deputy in Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM) and we were close friends.


ABIM


Today we have some writers dividing the Pas into the Traditionalists and the Erdogan groups, the latter meaning the Anwarites. That isn’t quite right.

Pas had been a variety all the time since it was born and with many socialists joining the party soon after. Socialists, including Pak Boes and Pak Sako, had been together with Abu Bakar Baqir in Gunung Semanggol when the Hizbul Muslimin was formed in 1948. The party was promptly banned by the British Colonial Government.

Fadhil Noor joined ABIM in the early 70s followed later by Hadi Awang, with Dr Haron Din, Abdul Ghani Shamsuddin and Ahmad Awang from the Persatuan Ulama Malaysia (PUM) and many more Pas stalwarts acting as advisors in the Muslim youth organization.

There was unity among those from the ABIM in Umno and Pas even if the groups had to undergo a severe initial shock following Anwar’s decision to join Umno in 1981.

By 1985 Anwar had gone places. He met Paul Wolfowitz who was US ambassador in Jakarta in 1986. The beginning of the Reformasi would soon be seeded.

ABIM was to get together with B.J.Habibie’s ICMI in Indonesia, ushering in a new element, new thinking and new Malay-Islamic outlook.

Habibie, an aero-engineer who was one among 20 bright-sparks Suharto sent abroad to become Indonesia’s future technocrats, would soon inspire with his wonder-ideas, like using the reflected sunlight from the sand in the shallows of the sea along the shorelines for energy.

He planned to make helicopters and submarines in Indonesian and usher in industrialization in a big way.

Since then, the ABIM in Pas and the groups under Fadhil Noor and Hadi Awang were no longer the same as they had been when the ulama took over the party from Asri Haji Muda in 1982.

By 1995 the scenario we see today had been set. It was sensed sometime in the late 80s.

We were told a multiracial party like the Gerakan had been in 1969 would be needed to change the pattern of votes if the Opposition were to win.

Gerakan, in 1969, listed members of the Malaysian stardom with the late Prof. Dr. Syed Hussein al-Attas as president, his brother, Naguib, and the venerated Prof. Dr. Wang Gung-wu, V. David from the labor unions and many more greats leading the party that Dr. Lim Chong Eu founded.

As a result of the intrusion the votes broke the historical distribution and several states fell to the Opposition.

The similarities between the election results of 1969 and 2008 had too many things in common to be given to coincidences. Anwar had advisors who had studied well the voters’ behaviors in Malaysia.

A Gerakan of the 1969 sort was required and it was this Gerakan-type party that skidded in the making and became the PKR we know today – broad-based, no doubt, but with drug addicts, thieves and sex-savants inside.

Anwar was in prison at that time, people fearing for his life after he was severely beaten by the then IGP in police custody.

As a result PKR divisions were formed riding piggy-back on Pas. Now many party divisions are non-performing. Wan Azizah, the president, had six growing children to take care of.

The PKR, however, functioned as a vote-collector and soon it will be put in better battle order by Azmin Ali and his task force.

Now that the Pakatan is poised to win federal power, the people who worry like Shamsul should be told there was pre-planning and in the end the Malays will be secure in the Pas, no matter what the ancient Nik Aziz Nik Mat is saying. He seems to fear retirement and the loss of fame, or notoriety, whichever applies.


Welfare State

Pas under Abdul Hadi Awang is going for the Welfare State. In Islam the Welfare State is simply a national and a universal order that guarantees a set of securities.

These securities begin with Food and Water Security, Health Security, Employment and Old Age Securities, Education Security by which everyone, young and old, are entitled to free education and will be paid a stipend sufficient to meet their basic needs.

Then there are Supplies and Consumer Security that traditionally were the domains of the Muhasib, the responsibility given to former Lord President, Tun Salleh Abas, when Terengganu was held by the Pas in 2004-2008.

The same department is responsible for Moral and Ethical Security which makes it impossible to hoard and escape punishment, or to purchase votes like it has happened in the two previous Umno Divisional and Supreme Council elections.

The list of securities is not exhaustive, of course. When in Medinah with Abdul Hadi Awang I dropped my wallet in the mosque during Subuh prayer, Hadi told me it will not be picked by anyone and we can retrieve it when we return to the mosque for Zuhur. The wallet was there, intact.

All shops, including jewel and money-changer stores, would be left open without any guard during prayer times in Medinah and Mekah, which are Haramiyah, or sanctuaries.

It’s hard to believe nobody would be tempted to steal in whole towns of shops and stores left open and unguarded.

That’s the Islamic state of security Hadi has been talking about several times in his speeches and Dr Mahathir denying that is so. Mahathir was not honest. In fact, many believe he and some of his men were corrupt.

Aaand…and…and Umno too became corrupt.

Said Tengku Ahmad Rithaudeen, chairman of the party’s Disciplinary Board, the party is already corrupt at the core.

People know that this is true, and the corruption had begun sometime in the 80s under Dr. Mahathir who wanted to remain PM for life.

Can the Malays any longer trust their future to Umno? Is corruption somehow tame and developmentally neutral, even after Bloomberg suggested more than RM300 billion had been lost to corruption in Malaysia?

What glory is there in the BN taking over the Perak government when two of the three grasshoppers should have been charged in court for accepting money and sexual gratifications?

What about the BN’s decision not to contest in Penanti on May 31? Is that what a political struggle is about? Isn’t there anything more to gain in whipping the Opposition during a by-election run?

Can it be the same as it would be with Islam under the Pas?

The list of securities in Islam given above is in the limited case, the object here is merely to show that Islam is not the Devil’s Workshop some in America and Europe would have us believe.

There’s freedom of religion in Islam. For the Socialists looking for nationalization, in the times of the second Caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, five essential items were nationalized, namely weapons (it was wartime), grains, salt, sugar and fabrics.

You would term those primary industries today. But the nationalization is merely “an attire” or a dressing in Islam. It is only useful when it serves to secure the People.

But where then is the “explosion” to be making history with in Islam, like with the Proletarian Revolution in scientific socialism?

That lies in the fight against “Falsehoods” (Taghut), the expressed arrogance of the Rich and Mighty that mars human liberty, equality, fraternity and dignity. It’s as easy as that, something everyone can understand.

If you have a problem with the PKR or the DAP, try Islam then, sans the mythic, the patriarchal, tribal and the superstitions. --a. ghani ismail, 19 May, 2009

INTO THE PERAK IMBROGLIO AND AFTER

THE PERAK IMBROGLIO -
SWINGING FROM THE CEILING FOR PEOPLE POWER


As soon as one democratic history was made in Ipoh with the unprecedented disorder at the opening of the new session of the Perak State Assembly on 7 May, another history was being readied to repeat itself from outside the august building that’s become september.

If there had been chandeliers in the state assembly hall, assemblymen, fully dressed in the splendorous outfits of the state’s lawmakers, could have been seen swinging from the ceiling in the attempt to disrupt the proceedings the Pakatan Rakyat conceived as illegal.

The Pakatan Rakyat (Pakatan) literally means People’s Pact. It was contesting in court the legitimacy of the Barisan Nasional (BN) government the state ruler appointed in February. The judgment shall be read on Monday 11 May.

But in the wake of the failed attempt to disrupt the May sitting is to be seen the seeding of a failed state many observers have decided is staring at us eye-ball to eye-ball.

The turn of events in Perak from February, when the Sultan decided to appoint a new Menteri Besar, has now reached the point when the Pakatan will probably gain much politically by returning to People’s Power.

The court will decide who the legitimate Perak Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) is this Monday.

Whether it will be Nizar of Pakatan or Zambry of BN, it is the people who must be finally the kingmaker and the people are not sure that the monarch was vested with the power to dismiss Nizar.

That makes for a crack in the wall large enough for People’s Power to slip through and to continue aggressing for change.

This time the change is spelled into a simple compound of ending the BN (and Alliance) rule of more than 50 years in the 13th general elections which the new PM, Najib Tun Razak, will have to decide as early as he possibly can for a mandate.

It is now about the force of popular perceptions in a circumstance of a weakened government abruptly underscored by massive corruption and a ruling-elite of contractors, businessmen and professionals that’s popularly assumed as unreservedly arrogant.

It is also about a Prime Minister with a luggage heavy enough for him to be evenly distracted, isolated and demonized, which is what the game has become since Najib Tun Razak took over from Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Pak Lah) about a month before.

The doubt about the monarch’s power-reach is one thing and the problem of the PM and the power-elite is another. The third disturbing factor is about the police political over-reactions.

The BN, having lost enough popular support to be denied the two-third majority in parliament on 8 March 2008, turned under Pak Lah to using the police to stem the tide of popular demand for change and for basic democratic liberties.

On 7 May in Ipoh the police force apparently recoiled like a disturbed cobra and struck, arresting 69 in the ripples of the protests advanced by the Pakatan lawmakers in the State Assembly.

Some were arrested for wearing black T-shirts to mark 1Black Malaysia, a lithe marker of the 7 May opening of the “illegal” Perak State Assembly.

Others were arrested for standing around the State Assembly building and some for drinking tea at coffee-shops within a given radius from the building.

It was as though the State Secretariat building was conceived as a nuclear bomb test-ground.

When lawmakers, both federal and state, were among those arrested and were handcuffed and taken to the Balai, what was messaged in our heads was a repeat of the arrest and subsequent injury vested on the then Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, who was taken from his house in 1998 by a troop of police personnel wearing balaclavas and armed with automatic weapons.

The reactions were plain: If that could be done on the deputy prime minister and the lawmakers it can be done to any of us without a squeak being heard. It is feudal and it is tyranny.

It’s the kind of action designed to drive the people into a sense of impotence and that failed before, leading instead to the popular rejection of the BN and which has stayed for more than a year since 8 March 2009.

The pictograph issued to our brains from the day of Anwar’s arrest and subsequent abuse in police custody was of a Police State.

It was this pictograph of the Police State that has been the most tangible evidence of power misuse in a nation popularly conceived as ruled by a self-seeking and corrupt elite, now intervened by three monarchs for good measure.

This same hyperactive police force, we are often told, is faction-wracked.

When one senior officer is transferred to another location, it was said the group of his subordinates would follow him, leaving his successor having to begin anew in the arts and sciences of crime-busting in the given locale.

In the circumstances of rising prices, flips-flops or fumbles of policy decisions and which have even led to royal interventions in at least three states, increasing crime rate, unemployment, falling morale and growing malaise, the accumulated distresses must lend something familiar to the critical mind – i.e. failing statecraft.

Hence, more and more want a recall of People’s Power to furnish the gloom with a bright yonder. Allahu Akbar! Workers Unite! Ahem, it’s a naked backside of a China doll!

And yet the Pakatan is poised to win bigger in a Perak state re-election and in the 13th general elections. The People have had enough. --- a. ghani ismail, 9 May, 2009