Politik, Legislatif, Dasar dan Tadbir Urus

The administrators of the Umno youth facebook page has finally apologized to the public for its offensive postings recently, saying that "those who agree to make Christianity an official religion of Malaysia, continue supporting Pakatan Rakyat, God bless you my son". The apology made by Umno youth has finally signify their admission to seditious postings in their facebook page. However, the authorities should continue its action against those who are involved in such seditious postings. The Evidence Act and Seditious Act are both applicable to such an irresponsible action. No one should be above the law when come to spreading message of hate and disunity. So, what happened to all those so-called "sandiwara" played by the Umno youth leader earlier? Lodging police reports around here and there denying the ownership of this facebook page of theirs and in one particular report had also gave a conflicting statement by saying that someone has hacked into their page. ...

Barely a day after the prime minister's department email on the RM100 offer to all National Day participants was leaked out to the press, the BN government is quick to come up with a statement of denial after its plan received strings of condemnation from the public which regards on "patriotism for money" scheme. The statement of denial was issued by the minister in the prime minister's department and Gerakan president Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon recently. So, what actually has transpired around inside the prime minister's department. Dr Koh who is the minister in charge of the national unity and integration unit need to provide the clear explanation. Whose blunt idea was that? To use money to attract more people to participate in the National Day event? Never in the history of the National Day celebration, cash was offered to the public to encourage their participation and this is the first time. First of all, why is the BN government so desperate in proposi...

The Barisan Nasional (BN) federal government is offering cash to all participants of the upcoming National Day event which is to be held at Kuala Lumpur this 31August 2012. An email from the prime minister's department has revealed that the government will be offering cash rewards to more than 1,000 participants of the National Day event. It has been confirmed that all these participants would received an amount of RM100 each for five days, from the dates of rehearsal right to the actual day. Wow! throwing cash again. Is this part of their electoral incentives? Just because the 13th general elections is somewhere around this time and this is why the government is giving out cash to everyone. First they thrown out RM500 each to everyone under the BR1M scheme, then they poured out another few millions of Ringgit to the Felda settlers, another round of RM500 will be disbursed soon but no news yet. Apart from this, by offering such cash rewards to the participants, it looks li...

On Tuesday, the Penang Gerakan legal and human rights bureau chairman Baljit Singh had urged both Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Rakyat (PR) to set aside their partisan politics to jointly legislate an anti-hoping law to protect public interests. According to the Gerakan leader, both BN and PR should do it for the sake of all Malaysians. Baljit later said that party hopping is against public interest as it is considered as a betrayal of the voters' mandate. Yes, we firmly agreed with this Gerakan man on proposal to come up with an anti-hopping law to prevent party hopping among members of parliament (MPs) and state assemblymen (ADUN). Earlier, DAP National Chairman Karpal Singh has also stated the party's stand against party hopping and hope that both side of the political divide could come up with an anti-hopping law in order to protect the public interests. Then, Penang Chief Minister and DAP Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng came forward to suggest that Penang would i...

Recently, a seditious remark saying that voting for Pakatan Rakyat would result to Christianity becoming an official religion of this countrty, has been posted in the Umno youth facebook. When public outrage increased and condemnation from the public went out of control, Umno youth leaders were quick to lodge police report to claim that their facebook has been hacked and another police report by denying that that facebook page was not theirs. Immediately, many Umno youth leaders came out to claim either someone has hacked into their facebook page or that facebook page doesn't belong to the movement. So, which is which? And the latest statement came from Umno youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin saying that he is willing to be charged under the new Section 114A of the Evidence Act 2012, only after the police announced that the seditious remarks posted in the Umno youth facebook page would not be investigated under Section 114A of the Evidence Act 2012 but instead, it would be investig...

Four months ago, the parliamentary select committee (PSC) on electoral reform under the chairmanship of Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili (BN-PBS) has made several recommendations to the Elections Commission (EC) to undertake reforms in its electoral system, management, electoral list clean up, postal balloting and so on. Reminders after reminders were very often heard of particularly from the general public, the opposition front and the coalition of NGOs who organized the previous two Bersih rallies. Today, the same reminder was made by an opposition  member of parliament Anthony Loke citing that the EC has yet to implement any of the recommendations forwarded by the PSC until today. So, what is wrong with EC? Before this, we do heard a few words from the EC chairman and deputy chairman respectively who demonstrated their arrogance by refusing public views and scrutiny onto the EC's entire electoral management system. Yes, they did gave in and announce several steps to implement som...

According to the Bukit Gelugor MP and DAP National Chairman, Karpal Singh, elected MPs or state assemblymen (ADUNs) cannout go against the wishes of the people. We support the stand made by Karpal and we hope that the other leaders of DAP and the other two Pakatan component parties, PKR and PAS would also state their stand against party-hopping. It is not only happening from the Pakatan side (who switched camp and joined BN), but it is also happening at the BN side (switching their support to Pakatan). And all these situation has its reasons behind. But we don't care whether it is because they were being bought over (with money) or it is because of their "principle" that they are believing in. What we all knew is that these MPs and state assemblymen were elected by the people in the general elections who voted and supported the political parties of their choice and not by the individual persons named. And those MPs and state assemblymen were elected on their respec...

When Gerakan was holding the chief minister's postion in Penang until the year 2008, Indian politicians from within the Penang BN coalition (of which Gerakan is also a member), particularly from the MIC, PPP and Gerakan itself are full of political bickering when it comes to who are to be appointed into the Penang Hindu Endowment Board (PHEB). What else? Why Gerakan has more members in it, why MIC as the biggest Indian-based political party was not given the larger share of the PHEB membership, why PPP too, an Indian-majority party was left out and many more this and that. Although PHEB was set up for religious and welfare purpose in particular, it has been wholly-politicised ever since. And when Pakatan Rakyat (PR) took over the Penang state from BN in the 2008 general elections, the traditions of letting politicians to run the affairs of PHEB has continued then. As the result, the almost similar BN political bickering in the PHEB has been passed on to the now PR-dominated PH...

The sexually-tainted MCA president, Dr Chua Soi Lek had today mentioned that it was Pakatan to be blamed for the amendment of the Section 114A of the Evidence Act that was voted in as a law. Dr Chua had claimed that during the voting process, Pakatan MPs had failed to stop the attempt to put Section 114A into effect. What on earth is this disgraced MCA leader trying to say? Didn't he know that who is currently holding the majority in the parliament? How many BN MPs were there, plus a few pro-BN MPs who had all voted and supported the Section 114A in the parliament? Has Dr Chua forgotten that the BN has effectively used its majority in the parliament to push the Evidence Act to be voted and approved? Didn't Dr Chua realize that the BN parliament speaker had also blocked several attempts by Pakatan MPs to further debate on several bills that were tabled earlier. So, do you think that Pakatan would ever have the chance to effectively block or prevent the Section 114A of the...

All religions are equal in status. Be it Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, Christianity, Bahai or any other religions that you could name, again, all religions are equal in status. No religion is greater than others and no religion is powerful than others.  Why did we stress on the equality of all religions around us? This is because the gurus, prophets, great teachers, masters and the initiators of these religions did not claim the religions that they had propagated earlier as greater than any other religions.  These gurus, prophets, great teachers and masters merely told the people who adopted their teachings to practice what were taught as "the way of life". To be practised in their daily life, creating and performing good deeds in order to receive good blessings, in order to create good results in our next lives, in order to rejoice for other people, to reduce the sufferings of others, to promote charity and to cultivate wisdom in all areas of our ...

Section 114A of the Evidence Act 2012 kills our freedom of expression online. Let us all come up together to oppose this law and the dictatorship of the BN government by joining the Internet Blackout Day on tomorrow 14 August 2012.

The former prime minister and ex-Umno president Dr Mahathir Mohamad had declared that Umno is the original Malay party who had struggled for this country's independence. He is either denying the facts or forgotten the real history. Prior to the existence of Umno, there are already a few Malay-based political parties who had came forward to fight against the British colonial government in Malaya. The most notable ones were Kesatuan Melayu Muda (KMM) and Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM). Unfortunately, during the self-rule period offered by the British, Umno had collaborated with the colonist to erase the origins of the Malay independence struggle prior to the formation of Umno in order to make the later the pioneer of the Malayan independence. After this country achieved independence and Umno dominates the entire nation, the party began to change the Malayan history by erasing all the earlier history and facts so that to make Umno the sole party who had "fought...

A pondok -based religious school teacher named Abdullah Sa'amah today declared that is is haram for Muslims to support and vote for DAP and added that MCA was acceptable because this Barisan Nasional (BN) component party recognised Islam's pre-eminence. According to that religious teacher, it is compulsoryy for the Muslims in PAS, Umno and PKR to reject DAP because of the later's struggle for equality for all Malaysians. He also added that it is sinful too to support and vote for political parties that are aligned with DAP. We wonder who is this Abdullah Sa'amah and he just suddenly popped out from nowhere simply to just issue his kind of "fatwa". What right or qualification does he has do issue such religious decree? He reasoned that DAP is haram because the party was against the implementation of hudud laws in this country. But Abdullah Sa'amah's memory later deteriorated when he forgotten that it was MCA who had first opposed the hudud and ot...

In the beginning, DLCW was mean as an acronym referring to Datuk Lee Chong Wei, our nation's badminton star, but the DLCW was later turned into a campaign spurned around the nation and it has been altered as "Don't Let China Win". First of all, why turn DLCW into a "Don't Let China Win" campaign? What are the real motives behind this campaign? Was it made to belittle Chong Wei's rival from China, Lin Dan? Was it made to pressure Chong Wei to ensure that he takes home a gold medal? For those who had initiated the "Don't Let China Win" (DLCW) campaign prior to last night's final match, didn't they realize that Chong Wei and the rest of the other athletes are merely competing in an international sports event called the Olympic Games? In the Olympic Games, everyone and every country were given a fair and equal opportunity to compete in all kinds of games that are allotted in the event, including badminton. So, if this is a ...

(Rencana ini telah disiarkan di kolum saya dalam portal berita Malaysia-Chronicle) Irshad Manji adalah seorang penulis rakyat Kanada berketurunan Uganda yang telah menyatakan bahawa beliau adalah seorang penganut Islam yang taat dan beriman terhadap agama yang dianutinya selama ini. Baru-baru ini, beliau telah datang ke Malaysia bagi melancarkan satu lagi hasil penulisannya yang bertajuk “Allah, Kebebasan dan Cinta” yang telah diterjemahkan ke dalam Bahasa Malaysia. Bagaimanapun, belum sempat buku tersebut diedarkan ke seluruh negara, kementerian dalam negeri (KDN) yang bertindak atas aduan Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (Jakim) dan Jabatan Hal-ehwal Islam Wilayah Persekutuan (Jawi) telah menggunakan Seksyen 7 (1) Akta Percetakan dan Penerbitan 1984 untuk mengharamkan buku tersebut dengan alasan isi kandungannya adalah jelas bertentangan dengan ajaran al-Quran dan Hadis. Pengharaman ini adalah kali kedua buat buku hasil karya Irshad Manji. Buku pertamanya yang dikaran...

(Rencana ini telah disiarkan di kolum saya dalam portal berita Malaysia-Chronicle) Setelah didesak dan dikritik oleh rakyat jelata,  pertubuhan-pertubuhan bukan kerajaan (NGO) dan parti-parti politik, Suruhanjaya Pilihanraya (SPR) akhirnya terpaksa akur terhadap tuntutan rakyat pada keseluruhannya dengan membenarkan rakyat Malaysia yang bekerja dan bermastautin di luar negara untuk mengundi di dalam pilihanraya umum (PRU) yang akan datang. Akan tetapi, SPR didapati tidak ikhlas di dalam usaha membenar rakyat Malaysia yang berada di luar negara untuk mengundi kerana SPR menetap syarat bahawa mereka yang berada di luar negara perlu kembali ke negara ini sekurang-kurangnya sekali dalam lima tahun sebelum PRU yang akan datang. SPR membelakangi Perlembagaan Syarat yang dikenakan oleh SPR terhadap rakyat Malaysia yang berada di luar negara itu telah diumumkan oleh pengerusi SPR, Tan Sri Abdul Aziz baru-baru ini. Sedarkah pihak SPR yang syarat yang dikenakan tersebut ...