To RPK, Teresa and ISA detainess from Azly
15 09 2008
September 15, 2008Azly Rahman dr.azly.rahman@gmail.com
http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/
To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we endThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish'd.
— from William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Saudara RPK,
I hope they are treating you well, in this holy month of Ramadhan that is turning our nation into our Ramallah.
I write in a state of being free while you languish in sadness incarcerated by those in their dying days breathing painfully.
They say that you are anti-Islam and anti-government. The are wrong on both counts. You are a great defender not only of Islam but of other faiths. You are a great defender of a sane government yet to be installed and one that will gladly set you free.
They are fearing not you nor the voices of conscience no longer in the wilderness; they are fearing themselves – their Inner Self – that they are answering to in their scramble to satisfy their greed for material wealth and lust for power.
They have not made you a bankrupt, RPK. They themselves are drowned in riches that will bury them.Sdr. RPK. I hope your incarceration will be the brief. So too will be of the others.The rakyat feels that the present government will not be the one freeing you. A new one will.
Below I reproduce a tribute to you I wrote sometime ago.
——————————————————————————————————
There is so much sadness in our nation as we bemoan the imprisonment of a voice of conscience manifested in this individual called Raja Petra Kamaruddin.
There is so much anger in our consciousness as we wonder what justice denied can do to us as we see the rot in our cultural values and political lives — right in front of our eyes, feasted through the media.
Raja Petra is seeking deep in his inner self and journeying deep into the archeology of his consciousness and into the history of his self and his ancestors, seeking solace and guidance in what next to be done in this world in which the self argues and revolts against systems of oppression. His psyche and the journey of his soul perhaps bring him to a hill in Melaka some several centuries ago — a place where the legendary philosopher-king and the Bugis warrior stood on a hill riddled with bullets from the advancing Dutch colonials. Raja Haji died standing .
Raja Petra is a gifted human being who is showing us what Henry David Thoreau, the American transcendentalist, spoke about "civil disobedience. He is what the philosopher Karl Jaspers reminded us of the urge to disobey and ideology that has become corrupt to the core and has employed the state apparatuses to silence those who speak truth to power.
Raja Petra is what Che Guevara means to Malaysians, a gung-ho revolutioner whose interest in motorcycles helped him craft his own hugely successful "motorcycle diaries" and helped him symbolize and embody the free-wheeling spirit of Americanism of the "Easy Rider era".
Raja Petra is the symbol of the yearning in us to break free and to let out these "screams of consciousness" so that we may learn to understand better what actually is the problem with this nation that needs therapy as a consequence of its obsession with law and order it creates and it destroys. It is the Brahma-Shiva-Vishnu of politics that we are seeing at play in the cosmic cycle, this karma of Malaysian politics that is meeting its end of the yuga as consequences to the production of many duryodanas (Durjanas) in the process of birth and rebirth.
Raja Petra is a Bugis warrior who installs kings and umpires and players in this game of politics we all are asked to play for fifty years. He make us conscious of the complexities of power relations, the roles of individuals in installing ideologies, the power of institutions in designing "inscriptions that alienate people" and helps us understand the nature of Malaysia's interlocking directorates — of who owns what and what are the consequences of these.
Raja Petra is a commander-in-chief of a movement that exists in cyberspace and orchestrates the powerful dialogues that send shivers to the spines of those who cheats in this political game.
Raja Petra has shown us what jihad means and how we must carry on this revolution to its final destiny — a republic of virtue in which philosophy reigns supreme over ideology, whatever the ideology may be.
Raja Petra will be out soon, to carry on the revolution in the consciousness of men and women — a perpetual revolution that forces us to look at ourselves as historical beings and wonder "what have we done to make this country as it is in which justice is denied, delayed, and dictated by the few."
But there will always be Divine Justice, if one believes in the power of the Divine — in a Just God and God of Mercy and Compassionate who works in mysterious ways and one who works through the agency called human beings — that will make things end well, even if all is not well in the beginning of things.
"Man proposes God disposes", many have said. In us all, in the humiliation wrought upon this human being called Raja Petra and in the imprisonment of this voice of conscience, lies the mystery of revelation of justice. We shall see what lies ahead. We must, however continue to become makers of history — to protest either silently or out loud either in solitude or with others in pomp and pageantry, protest we must as we are essentially human beings born free with natural rights endowed by the Creator. Borrowing Rousseau, we believe that "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains…"
Protest we must. Investigate we must too. Demands we will orchestrate in order to have corrupt men and women, powers abusers amongst us, and swindling robber-barons amidst us to be brought to justice in the court of law that shall be governed by the people, through the will of the rakyat.
The rakyat awaits your homecoming, a candlelight vigil will adorn the street in front of the prison-industrial complex built by those who designed architecture of structural-violence, unseen by the naked eyes of the rakyat. Like the candles that await Sita Devi and like the candle-lights that bathes Jalaluddin Rumi, the light from the rakyat soothes and calms your bruised spirit in their patient wait for your freedom.
A grandchild of that Bugis warrior prince, a philosopher-ruler, better that many a prince Machiavelli pays tribute to– you are a voice of conscience and you shall be free. Free at last.. free at last…
Hang in there, RPK. This is your bohemian rhapsody. Hang in there for a few days, weeks, Saudara RPK.This is my humble gift to thee. May these words renew your spirit.
And the rakyat will not take it to the streets either. They will stay home and watch the soap opera on race and religion played to an audience of none. They will wait and see which government will set you free.
Here is Shakespeare's piece for thee, in its entirety:To be, or not to be (from Hamlet 3/1)
To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause: there's the respectThat makes calamity of so long life;For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,The insolence of office and the spurnsThat patient merit of the unworthy takes,When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,To grunt and sweat under a weary life,But that the dread of something after death,The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pith and moment.
With this regard their currents turn awry,And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisonsBe all my sins remember'd.
IN HONOR OF RPK, TERESA KOK, AND ALL THOSE DETAINED INDEFINITELY, PLEASE POST APPROPRIATE COMMENTS ONLY; COMMENTS CALLING FOR PEACE AND CALM IN TIMES OF MANUFACTURED CHAOS.
RPK AND THOSE DETAINED WOULD APPRECIATE THIS, I AM SURE. MAY GOD SAVE THIS NATION AND INSTALL JUSTICE AND EQUALITY FOR ALL RACES.
STAY CALM, BE UNITED IN DIVERSITY — THE ISSUE IS NEITHER RACE NOR RELIGION. IT IS ABOUT A PEACEFUL TRANSITION OF POWER AND THE DECONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL POLITICS.
Azly Rahman
« UMNO in deeper crisis: A Step Backwards and Return to Semangat-46(?)
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Date : 15 September 2008
Categories : Democracy
4 responses to "To RPK, Teresa and ISA detainess from Azly"
15 09 2008
Mr Bean (00:28:05) :
I'm afraid Azly is way over the top on this one!
15 09 2008
dinobeano (00:35:16) :
Let us see how Azly will respond to your comment, Mr. Bean. He visits this blog regularly. —Din Merican
15 09 2008
omarkhayyam (01:00:15) :
guys,
"And the rakyat will not take it to the streets either. They will stay home and watch the soap opera on race and religion played to an audience of none. They will wait and see which government will set you free "
how true
this seems so true with Malaysians ! i mean i have 60 sumthin languishing in prison … an innocent reporter having nightmare of her life yet damn it people actually shut themselves in their air-con rooms with soap opera or go to THR concerts at PISA
and this same group will be decrying their fate when the government screws them up
cheers
15 09 2008
Mr Smith (01:21:00) :
RPK's life in danger, according to Haris.
http://harismibrahim.wordpress.com/
To RPK, Teresa and ISA detainess from Azly
15 09 2008
September 15, 2008Azly Rahman dr.azly.rahman@gmail.com
http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/
To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we endThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish'd.
— from William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Saudara RPK,
I hope they are treating you well, in this holy month of Ramadhan that is turning our nation into our Ramallah.
I write in a state of being free while you languish in sadness incarcerated by those in their dying days breathing painfully.
They say that you are anti-Islam and anti-government. The are wrong on both counts. You are a great defender not only of Islam but of other faiths. You are a great defender of a sane government yet to be installed and one that will gladly set you free.
They are fearing not you nor the voices of conscience no longer in the wilderness; they are fearing themselves – their Inner Self – that they are answering to in their scramble to satisfy their greed for material wealth and lust for power.
They have not made you a bankrupt, RPK. They themselves are drowned in riches that will bury them.Sdr. RPK. I hope your incarceration will be the brief. So too will be of the others.The rakyat feels that the present government will not be the one freeing you. A new one will.
Below I reproduce a tribute to you I wrote sometime ago.
——————————————————————————————————
There is so much sadness in our nation as we bemoan the imprisonment of a voice of conscience manifested in this individual called Raja Petra Kamaruddin.
There is so much anger in our consciousness as we wonder what justice denied can do to us as we see the rot in our cultural values and political lives — right in front of our eyes, feasted through the media.
Raja Petra is seeking deep in his inner self and journeying deep into the archeology of his consciousness and into the history of his self and his ancestors, seeking solace and guidance in what next to be done in this world in which the self argues and revolts against systems of oppression. His psyche and the journey of his soul perhaps bring him to a hill in Melaka some several centuries ago — a place where the legendary philosopher-king and the Bugis warrior stood on a hill riddled with bullets from the advancing Dutch colonials. Raja Haji died standing .
Raja Petra is a gifted human being who is showing us what Henry David Thoreau, the American transcendentalist, spoke about "civil disobedience. He is what the philosopher Karl Jaspers reminded us of the urge to disobey and ideology that has become corrupt to the core and has employed the state apparatuses to silence those who speak truth to power.
Raja Petra is what Che Guevara means to Malaysians, a gung-ho revolutioner whose interest in motorcycles helped him craft his own hugely successful "motorcycle diaries" and helped him symbolize and embody the free-wheeling spirit of Americanism of the "Easy Rider era".
Raja Petra is the symbol of the yearning in us to break free and to let out these "screams of consciousness" so that we may learn to understand better what actually is the problem with this nation that needs therapy as a consequence of its obsession with law and order it creates and it destroys. It is the Brahma-Shiva-Vishnu of politics that we are seeing at play in the cosmic cycle, this karma of Malaysian politics that is meeting its end of the yuga as consequences to the production of many duryodanas (Durjanas) in the process of birth and rebirth.
Raja Petra is a Bugis warrior who installs kings and umpires and players in this game of politics we all are asked to play for fifty years. He make us conscious of the complexities of power relations, the roles of individuals in installing ideologies, the power of institutions in designing "inscriptions that alienate people" and helps us understand the nature of Malaysia's interlocking directorates — of who owns what and what are the consequences of these.
Raja Petra is a commander-in-chief of a movement that exists in cyberspace and orchestrates the powerful dialogues that send shivers to the spines of those who cheats in this political game.
Raja Petra has shown us what jihad means and how we must carry on this revolution to its final destiny — a republic of virtue in which philosophy reigns supreme over ideology, whatever the ideology may be.
Raja Petra will be out soon, to carry on the revolution in the consciousness of men and women — a perpetual revolution that forces us to look at ourselves as historical beings and wonder "what have we done to make this country as it is in which justice is denied, delayed, and dictated by the few."
But there will always be Divine Justice, if one believes in the power of the Divine — in a Just God and God of Mercy and Compassionate who works in mysterious ways and one who works through the agency called human beings — that will make things end well, even if all is not well in the beginning of things.
"Man proposes God disposes", many have said. In us all, in the humiliation wrought upon this human being called Raja Petra and in the imprisonment of this voice of conscience, lies the mystery of revelation of justice. We shall see what lies ahead. We must, however continue to become makers of history — to protest either silently or out loud either in solitude or with others in pomp and pageantry, protest we must as we are essentially human beings born free with natural rights endowed by the Creator. Borrowing Rousseau, we believe that "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains…"
Protest we must. Investigate we must too. Demands we will orchestrate in order to have corrupt men and women, powers abusers amongst us, and swindling robber-barons amidst us to be brought to justice in the court of law that shall be governed by the people, through the will of the rakyat.
The rakyat awaits your homecoming, a candlelight vigil will adorn the street in front of the prison-industrial complex built by those who designed architecture of structural-violence, unseen by the naked eyes of the rakyat. Like the candles that await Sita Devi and like the candle-lights that bathes Jalaluddin Rumi, the light from the rakyat soothes and calms your bruised spirit in their patient wait for your freedom.
A grandchild of that Bugis warrior prince, a philosopher-ruler, better that many a prince Machiavelli pays tribute to– you are a voice of conscience and you shall be free. Free at last.. free at last…
Hang in there, RPK. This is your bohemian rhapsody. Hang in there for a few days, weeks, Saudara RPK.This is my humble gift to thee. May these words renew your spirit.
And the rakyat will not take it to the streets either. They will stay home and watch the soap opera on race and religion played to an audience of none. They will wait and see which government will set you free.
Here is Shakespeare's piece for thee, in its entirety:To be, or not to be (from Hamlet 3/1)
To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause: there's the respectThat makes calamity of so long life;For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,The insolence of office and the spurnsThat patient merit of the unworthy takes,When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,To grunt and sweat under a weary life,But that the dread of something after death,The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pith and moment.
With this regard their currents turn awry,And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisonsBe all my sins remember'd.
IN HONOR OF RPK, TERESA KOK, AND ALL THOSE DETAINED INDEFINITELY, PLEASE POST APPROPRIATE COMMENTS ONLY; COMMENTS CALLING FOR PEACE AND CALM IN TIMES OF MANUFACTURED CHAOS.
RPK AND THOSE DETAINED WOULD APPRECIATE THIS, I AM SURE. MAY GOD SAVE THIS NATION AND INSTALL JUSTICE AND EQUALITY FOR ALL RACES.
STAY CALM, BE UNITED IN DIVERSITY — THE ISSUE IS NEITHER RACE NOR RELIGION. IT IS ABOUT A PEACEFUL TRANSITION OF POWER AND THE DECONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL POLITICS.
Azly Rahman
Comments : 3 Comments » Categories : Democracy
UMNO in deeper crisis: A Step Backwards and Return to Semangat-46(?)
14 09 2008
www.malaysiakini.com
Athi Veeranggan September 14, 2008
The government crackdown on Friday where three individuals were arrested under the Internal Security Act indicates that all is not well in the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition.
MCPX
The arrest of blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin, Sin Chew Daily senior journalist Tan Hoon Cheng and DAP MP Teresa Kok under the tough security law - which provides for detention without trial - has irked many journalists, politicians and social activists.
PAS Parit Buntar MP Dr Mujahid Yusof Rawa argued it was unfair to arrest a journalist for doing her job while "the man who spat the venom roams free".
Contacted after Tan's arrest on Friday, suspended UMNO chieftain Ahmad Ismail - the man who allegedly made the racist remarks reported by Tan - appeared to be in a jovial mood in Kuala Lumpur and was not perturbed by the incident.
However, within hours of Tan's arrest, a large group of journalists, politicians, social activists as well as members of the public gathered outside the Penang police headquarters in Georgetown to show their support for the journalist.
Another crowd gathered outside the Central Seberang Perai district police headquarters in Bandar Baru Perda, Bukit Mertajam, where the reporter was held for three hours before she was transferred to the state headquarters.
A candlelight vigil was also held to protest against the use of the draconian ISA.
Scores of politicians from the state's ruling party DAP, PAS and even Gerakan and MCA arrived at the scene to condemn the arrest.
'Face-saving measure'
Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, himself a former ISA detainee, said he could understand what the trio were experiencing.
"Please don't ask me about my ordeal. I don't want anyone to suffer it," the DAP secretary-general told the media.
"Their arrest was against universal human rights, democratic values and press freedom," added Penang DAP publicity secretary Wong Hon Wai.
Some felt the presence of Gerakan and MCA politicians was a 'face-saving' measure to avoid blame over their role in the Ahmad controversy."If not for them and Penang UMNO leaders, things would not have blown up," observed Hindu Action Network coordinator G Mugunthan.
He described Penang Gerakan's 200-metre anti-ISA march from its headquarters to Sin Chew's Georgetown office on Saturday as a publicity stunt.
Gerakan secretary-general Chia Kwang Chye and vice-president Dr Teng Hock Nan were there to also expressed their displeasure against the ISA detention.
But when asked whether BN leaders, who blew Ahmad's infamous remarks out of proportion, should also be arrested, both remained tightlipped.
"They would not feel sorry because they want to regain their lost power at all cost," said an anti-ISA activist, adding that Ahmad's episode was a 'typical BN drama' to fish in troubled waters.
Umno in turmoil?
Activist Anil Netto linked the ISA detentions with UMNO's infighting over the 2010 transition plan and the much-touted Anwar Ibrahim's Sept 16 political coup.
Many have alleged that the Ahmad controversy was choreographed by UMNO-BN 'to create a chilling political atmosphere via communalism' so as to justify a massive crackdown on government dissidents.
The Sin Chew report on Ahmad's speech belittling Chinese Malaysians as "immigrants squatting in the country" was first played up by BN components - MCA and Gerakan - before DAP followed suit to lodge a series of police reports.
While DAP kept its distance from turning it into a racial issue, MCA and Gerakan harped on the matter.
Many felt that the imbroglio would have ended if Ahmad had emulated Perak's Sungai Rapat assemblyperson Hamidah Osman, who promptly apologised after uttering racist remarks against Indian Malaysians in June.
The unapologetic Ahmad was subsequently suspended by the party, but it was a case of too little, too late.
Some political analysts claimed that the Ahmad controversy and ISA detentions were scripted and directed by hidden hands to topple the premier to pre-empt Sept 16.
"It's the same classic story of an UMNO-BN screenplay to tense up the situation so that it can strengthen its waning power," said Mujahid.
On such previous occasions, UMNO was successful in resurrecting its power, but this time, it might not succeed due to several factors.
Chief among them is that the opposition is now led by a multi-racial coalition. Other factors include the prompt dissemination of information via the Internet, international pressure, widespread disenchantment against BN and possible royal intervention.
Like a lit candle spurting briefly before its demise, many view the latest incident as a desperate attempt by the Umno-BN government to stop the inevitable.
Razaleigh-Muhyiddin 'dream team'
It is also speculated that turmoil has besieged Umno, with a faction within the party forming a 'dream team' against party leader Abdullah and his deputy, Najib.
"It would reunite two of the biggest rivals UMNO has ever seen - Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah. And go beyond that," said Singapore's bilingual
MyPaper in a report on Friday - the day the crackdown was launched.
Former UMNO president Mahathir had quit the party in March and vowed to return only when his successor Abdullah is no longer at the helm.
The report stated that last Saturday's meeting of "Umno veterans" was not merely an effort to bring back Mahathir, but would also change the power equation in UMNO and put the 2010 transition plan in jeopardy.
"Mahathir will now reportedly throw his support behind Tengku Razaleigh, the man who came closest to defeating him in an UMNO election.
"Muhyiddin, who has publicly said Abdullah should not wait until 2010 to step down, could be Tengku Razaleigh's running mate in this Dream Team."
However, the report claimed that Muhyiddin has told friends he would be more than happy to step back for Rais Yatim, the veteran foreign minister.
According to the report, the 'dream team' would also include Mahathir's son Mukhriz, who will be gunning for the UMNO Youth chief post in December's party polls.
The newspaper also quoted a Razaleigh aide as saying that the prospects of a 'dream team' is giving the incumbent leaders sleepless nights.
"With the support of Mahathir, Muhyiddin and Rais, Tengku Razaleigh will definitely get the minimum number of nominations needed to contest the No 1 post," said the aide, who was not named.
Quoting sources, MyPaper also reported that Najib was so worried that he sought an appointment to see Mahathir and the duo met early last week.
"There have been no press reports on the meeting, but MyPaper understands that Mahathir made it clear to Najib that he was 'quite committed' to the dream team," read the report.
Comments : 24 Comments » Categories : 2008 Elections
Zaid Ibrahim, In Good Faith, Do it, Resign
14 09 2008
Law Minister threatens to quit over ISA
Beh Lih Yi September 14, 2908
De facto Law Minister Zaid Ibrahim today threatened to resign if the government continued to use the Internal Security Act, which he described as 'unjust'.
MCPX
The outspoken Barisan Nasional politician also called for the immediate release of DAP MP Teresa Kok and controversial blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin who were held under the security law which provides for detention without trial.
"We have a government that commits to laws and reforms, we can't be using old-style politics or resort to creating fear. We have laws and they (the detainees) can be charged in court.
"I am trying to meet with Prime Minister (Abdullah Ahmad Badawi) this week to convey to him my position. If (he considers) my position untenable, I will leave," he told
Malaysiakini in a telephone interview from Kota Baru, Kelantan.
The minister, who is a lawyer by training, held a press conference in Kota Baru earlier, where he also spoke on the same matter.Use ISA to fight terror
Zaid, who is the minister in the Prime Minister's Department overseeing legal matters, said his position on the ISA is that the law should only be used to curb terrorism, the reason why it was enacted.
"The problem with the ISA now is that it is used against certain people, it is a very unjust law," he added.
The ISA is a relic from the British which used the law to battle the communist insurgency. The Act earned notoriety after it was invoked by the government to stifle dissent, leading many to call for its abolition.
However, the government has continued to defend the relevance of the law on the grounds of national security.
Commenting further, Zaid said: "I am very sad that people like Teresa (right), who I know personally, can be seen as a threat. I can't see how a journalist doing her duty or even Raja Petra can be seen as a national threat.
"If their statements upset certain people, let the police investigate," the minister said, adding that he did not see the need for the government to use such a "strong-arm tactic."Zaid, who is the former Kota Baru MP, was made a senator and named as minister in charge of legal affairs during the cabinet reshuffle by premier Abdullah in March.
His appointment was lauded by many quarters, especially within the legal fraternity, as it was seen as a gesture by the prime minister to honour his pledge for judiciary reforms.
'A setback to judiciary reforms'
However, Zaid lamented that the latest ISA arrests dealt a blow to his six-month-long task of trying to regenerate the judiciary.
In relation to the concept of collective responsibility, the minister acknowledged that his views on certain matters do not go down well with his cabinet colleagues.
"I don't want to make it difficult for him (Abdullah). If my views are inconsistent or unsuitable (to that of the cabinet's), I can leave the government.
"It is a setback (on my work). The government wanted to change certain things otherwise they don't need me (to be in the cabinet)," he said.
Friday's ISA crackdown began with Raja Petra, who has targeted government figures on his website Malaysia Today. He was detained at 1.10pm.
Tan Hoon Cheng, a journalist for the Chinese language Sin Chew Daily, was later arrested at about 8.30pm.
She was detained in connection with her report regarding the derogatory remarks made by an Umno leader against the Chinese community which led to a national uproar.
Close to midnight, DAP MP and Selangor senior state exco Teresa Kok was detained outside her condominium.
The arrests elicited a round of strong protests from all quarters, including those within the BN component parties.
Journalist Tan was released yesterday after being held for less than 24 hours and Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar explained that her detention was "to ensure her safety."
http://www.malaysiakini.com/
Comments : 33 Comments » Categories : Democracy, Judiciary
Kenyataan Akhbar Pakatan Rakyat
14 09 2008
Penahanan ISA Tindakan Zalim
13hb. September 2008
Kepimpinan Pakatan Rakyat yang bertemu hari ini membantah sekeras-kerasnya tindakan terdesak kerajaan yang menangkap beberapa individu iaitu YB Teresa Kok, Raja Petra Kamarudin dan Tan Hoon Cheng di bawah akta zalim Akta Keselamatan Dalam Negeri (ISA). Kami mendesak pihak kerajaan agar membebaskan segera semua tahanan tanpa syarat. Sekiranya terdapat sebarang bukti mengenai sebarang kesalahan jenayah, ia harus dibicarakan di mahkamah terbuka.
Tindakan tangkapan ini terutama apabila pemberita yang menjalankan tugas ditangkap dan bukannya individu yang mengeluarkan kenyataan, adalah bukti manipulasi UMNO yang menggunakan isu kaum untuk menakutkan rakyat. Bahkan komponen Barisan Nasional sendiri tidak menyokong tindakan kejam ini. Kami mendesak kerajaan mengotakan janji mereka bahawa tidak akan ada lagi tahanan ISA selepas ini.
Kami berharap tindakan kerajaan ini bukan merupakan percubaan awal untuk menangkap lebih ramai ahli politik pembangkang dengan tujuan menggagalkan usaha Pakatan Rakyat membentuk kerajaan dalam masa terdekat.
Suasana tidak stabil yang nampaknya sengaja ditimbulkan oleh pihak kerajaan mengundang rasa tidak tenteram di kalangan rakyat terbanyak dan boleh mengancam keselamatan negara. Sehubungan itu Pakatan Rakyat bersetuju untuk mengambil beberapa tindakan:
1) Mencadangkan pertemuan tertutup antara wakil Pakatan Rakyat dan YAB Perdana Menteri dalam masa terdekat bagi membincangkan soal keselamatan negara dan masa depan politik Malaysia.
2) Mengadakan himpunan secara aman bersama Kerajaan Negeri Selangor di stadium Kelana Jaya pada malam 15 September 2008 bagi merayakan Hari Malaysia.
YB Dato' Seri Anwar IbrahimKetua UmumPKR
YB Lim Kit Siang,Ketua Ahli ParlimenDAP
YB Dato' Seri Abdul Hadi AwangPresidenPAS
ISA Detention is Despotic Attempt
The Pakatan Rakyat leadership who met today vehemently opposes the desperate move by the government in detaining a few individuals, namely YB Teresa Kok, Raja Petra Kamarudin and Tan Hoon Cheng, under the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA). We demand for the immediate release of all detainees without any conditions. If there are any evidence to implicate them, they should be tried in open court.
The detention especially on the reporter on duty instead of the individual who issued the statement, is a proof of UMNO's incessant manipulation of the racial sentiment to raise fear among the people. Even the Barisan Nasional components themselves are not supporting such a devious act. We demand that the government stick with their promise that there will be no more ISA detentions after this.
We hope that the government action is not a beginning of mass arrest of opposition leaders in their attempt to thwart the of Pakatan Rakyat to form a government.
The image unstable situation is staged by the government to plant fear and anxiety in the people and can be a cause for national unrest. Therefore the Pakatan Rakyat has agreed to take several actions:
1) To propose for an urgent closed door meeting between our representative and the Prime Minister to discuss about national security and the future of Malaysian politics.
2) To organise together with Selangor State government a peaceful gathering at Kelana Jaya Stadium on the eve of September 16th to celebrate the Malaysian Day.
YB Dato' Seri Anwar IbrahimKetua UmumPKR
YB Lim Kit Siang,Ketua Ahli ParlimenDAP
YB Dato' Seri Abdul Hadi AwangPresidenPAS
Comments : 12 Comments » Categories :
Democracy, Politics
Khoo Kay Peng: Che Det Should Speak for Himself
14 09 2008
September 13, 2008
Dr M's recent statement about the Chinese Malaysians being more interested in business and would readily accept race based politics shows how outdated he is as a politician.
At the same time he highlighted the some possible actions which could be taken against the Chinese community should they voice out their dissatisfaction against the government.
He said:
"Even hawkers and small traders; the subcontractors, the retail shops owners are unhappy with the government. They are however very cautious about criticising Datuk Seri Abdullah but when pressed they admit that they wanted Abdullah out but dared not say it aloud for fear of being accused of rejecting Malay leadership.
"They also worry about their businesses being singled out for some unpleasant treatment like being investigated by the Inland Revenue Board," he wrote in his blog today.
Must Dr M be reminded that these tactics if used are a continuation from his era? As the premier, he had perfected the art of political persecution against those who went against him - those detained during the Operasi Lallang and Anwar Ibrahim.
Raja Petra's ISA detention today resembles a common dirty tactic used during his era to detain and silence political opponents. Dr M should not underestimate Malaysians and their level of political maturity. Most Chinese Malaysians and other races (including the Malays) were more disturbed by the Keris waving issue at the UMNO's general assembly than the incompetence of Abdullah Badawi.
Abdullah is seen as incompetent because he could not manage and discipline a bunch of racist members/leaders in his party.
Dr M must not be surprised to hear that we supported Abdullah in 2004 because he promised to initiate reforms to get us out of the rot and excesses of the Mahathir era which was an epitome of racism, abrasive and highhanded politics, corruption and nepotism.
Abdullah as an individual is less spiteful than Dr M. We did not and should not criticize his personal character but his political and leadership incompetence. Then again, as his ex-boss and the one who put Abdullah in his current position, Dr M must shoulder most of the blame for the state of politics we have experienced today.
Who turned all other non-UMNO component parties in BN into small pussy cats? Dr Mahathir. Yet, Dr Mahathir insisted that the votes for the opposition were not due to a desire to replace BN with Pakatan Rakyat, but were actually protest votes. He said,"But is it protest against the BN parties? Is it a rejection of race-based politics? I don't think so."Goodness sake, stop blaming Abdullah Badawi for everything that went wrong in this country. It started from you, Dr M. Dr M should just speak for himself and not for 6.5 million Chinese Malaysians in this country.We know best what we want from politicians. SAY NO TO RACISM!
Yes, Dr M has proven to us that he is a bygone, a relic of his generation. I reckon many of his generation are more progressive than the ex-premier to suggest that Chinese Malaysians do not mind race-based politics.
Posted by Khoo Kay Peng
Comments :
22 Comments » Categories : Politics
Barisan Nasional on the run (?)
14 09 2008
http://www.malaysiakini.com/
by Dean Johns
After its general election fright, Barisan Nasional's first ploy was to stand and fight. But instead of successfully counter-attacking by cleaning up its act and enacting the reforms the prime minister keeps promising, it fought as dirty as ever.
MCPX
It hit Anwar Ibrahim with a new sodomy charge, blocking Malaysia-Today.net, threatened to throw the immensely-popular Raja Petra Kamarudin into jail, and then employed race and money as weapons in the Permatang Puah by-election
But all these assaults have only strengthened the resolve of the majority of the rakyat to run BN out of office. And, with Anwar back in parliament, heading the opposition and confidently predicting he'll get enough crossovers to win government, BN's resolve to fight is increasingly turning to thoughts of flight.
How else to explain the extraordinary fact that, instead of staying around in this hour of peril, and helping govern the country, 40 or so Barisan Nasional MP's have run off for a "retreat" to study agriculture in Taiwan.
I say 40 "or so" because figures vary as to how many have gone. In fact the whole expedition has been so sudden, strange and confused that it's become a running joke.
According to the first report I saw, BN Backbenchers Club (BBC) deputy chairperson Bung Mokhtar Radin sent BN MPs a SMS message reading "BN BBC has received approval to hold a retreat overseas from Sept 7 to Sept 19. The attendance of all MPs is compulsory."
The choice of the term "retreat" was a little unfortunate, I thought, given that many would leap to the obvious conclusion that the jaunt was timed to prevent MPs from jumping onto the PKR bandwagon by Anwar's stated deadline of Sept 16.
And of course that's what most people did. According to a Malaysiakini story I saw, Mas Gading (Sarawak) BN MP Dr Tiki Lafe told The Borneo Post that the opposition could make use of the BN trip "to create all kinds of wild rumours".
He also ventured the opinion that: "As the time is now considered 'critical', we have to be more practical. When the opposition is boasting of taking over the government everyday, there is more reason why we should be in our respective constituency."
Tiki reportedly added that he hoped that "his criticism of the retreat would not be interpreted as an intention to defect to Pakatan Rakyat and that people should not question his loyalty to BN".
Less temperate and accommodating in his remarks was an unnamed Johor BN MP quoted by Wan Hamidi Hamid and Shannon Teoh in The Malaysian Insider as declaring that "This is the most stupid idea I have ever heard of. How can you stop defections like this? I wonder if they have the approval of the PM".
Most of us were left wondering about not just who approved this idiotic expedition, but who was paying for it. It was variously reported as being entirely funded by one person, or self-funded by each participant. But many commentators, I noticed, cynically predicted that, as usual with BN events, the public would foot the bill.Flight to nowhere
As to where the BN MPs were running away to, the first estimate I saw was Australia, then China became a possibility, and finally the organisers settled on Taiwan.
I was personally quite relieved when Australia was dropped from consideration, as we have enough low-life of our own down here without a contingent of BN MPs compounding the problem by possibly trying to import undeclared cash and claiming not to be able to read English.
China apparently fell out of contention because the appropriate visas couldn't be arranged at such short notice.
But why, of all places, Taiwan became the default destination of the "study tour", I have no idea.
Given that Malaysian agriculture seems to consist largely of oil palm, more oil palm and even more oil palm, why run off to a country whose principal farm products are, according to my quick Google search, rice, betel nuts, pineapples, mangoes, sugar cane, watermelons, tea, bamboo shoots, pears and peanuts?
And in any case, if the study is in any way serious, why send a bunch of slow-learners like BN MPs? If they're capable of becoming better informed, why not send them to study something that might improve their performance of their parliamentary duties, like good governance, say, or anti-corruption techniques or judicial, electoral and police reform?
Or, on the other hand, what about flying them off, as some bloggers suggested, to somewhere like Zimbabwe to see and experience for themselves the kind of agricultural economy Malaysia can look forward to if the government they're part of stays in power long enough?
All joking aside though, who cares where they go or what they pretend to study there, or even who's paying the bill, as long as the whole scam is a sure sign that PKR has the BN government on the run?
As Lim Kit Siang said in a statement the other day: "Despite maintaining a public stance of stoic indifference, there is no doubt that with the daily countdown to Sept 16, there is an increasing panic in Umno and BN leadership ranks over the degree of cohesion, solidarity and allegiance of the 75 BN backbenchers."
Lambasting BBC chairperson Tiong King Sing for "hatching such a stupid idea" as to treat MPs "like delinquent children who have to be packed off overseas and secluded from mischief," he made the very pertinent point that "If there are BN MPs who are minded to leave BN … nothing can stop them from proceeding with their fateful decisions any time after their return to Malaysia after Sept 16."
Lim's absolutely right. Unless the runaways seek asylum in Taiwan, they'll fly home to face the choice of turning-over to PKR to help run the country better, or staying with a coalition whose ruinous monopoly on power has given it far too long a run for its – or rather the rakyat's – money.
Comments : 43 Comments » Categories : Politics
Philip Bowring: Power Play in Malaysia—A Little History
13 09 2008
August 1999 44 » Special report »
Power Play in Malaysia Buy Issue The political destruction of Anwar Ibrahim by his one-time mentor, Mahathir Mohamad, was absorbing theatre. But what does his fall mean for Malaysia's race-based populist democracy? And who will lead the country post-Mahathir?
Philip Bowring
Philip Bowring is a writer.
It is right and proper to take the side of Anwar Ibrahim, former Malaysian deputy prime minister, in his (so far) unequal struggle with his former mentor, prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad. As Mahathir prepares to strengthen his grip on power through an election likely to be held in August, Anwar is facing another set of politically motivated criminal accusations-this time, for sodomy.
The ruling coalition headed by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) is certain to remain in power. A poor result for UMNO would undermine Mahathir's position, but is unlikely to topple the man who has moulded Malaysia's race-based democracy into a unique blend of populist authoritarianism.
A martyr's crown seems to sit as easily on Anwar's head as devilish horns do on Mahathir's. But this does not explain how Anwar came to fall so quickly from heir apparent-a position he had formally held for five years, informally for ten. Anwar has been in the roughhouse of Malaysian politics for long enough to know how vicious it can be. And he has been close enough to Mahathir to know that this is a man who takes no prisoners, makes up the rules as he goes along, and plays for high stakes to ensure personal dominance over the state and, more importantly, UMNO. Anwar had been at Mahathir's side when he fought off the biggest challenge to his rule, in 1988, when former finance minister Tunku Razaleigh Hamzah almost ousted him from the leadership.
Razaleigh came within a few UMNO delegate votes of toppling Mahathir, despite his association with the biggest of the many banking scandals which have linked business and politics in Malaysia for the past two decades. Ironically, Mahathir is now using a rehabilitated Razaleigh against Anwar's supporters.
The answer to the puzzle of Anwar's fall may be that he came to believe his own propaganda-or at least that of his young associates eager for power. Mahathir, on the other hand-unusually for someone who has been in power for 18 years-appears to have had no illusions about himself. He has never courted popularity and thrives on being himself, an outsider willing to take on individuals and institutions. Scruples were not for a man whose mission was to stay in power and modernise Malaysia on his own terms.
Anwar's political roots
Anwar's ambition was to become prime minister at a time of the party's choosing, rather than allow Mahathir to hang on as long as it suited him-which, many believed, was until he died. But Anwar's ambition, unlike Mahathir's, was not matched by ruthlessness. Perhaps this derives from their respective backgrounds. Although not an aristocrat, Anwar, 52, came up through the usual Malay elite route-the Malay College at Kuala Kangsar and then on to the University of Malaya. The elegant, eloquent youth then founded an idealistic Muslim youth movement, Abim (Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia, or Islamic Youth Movement of Malaysia). Anwar was jailed briefly in 1974 for leading a demonstration of disgruntled rice farmers, an episode which suggested a youthful commitment to social justice rather than to religious extremism. This was the era of the Vietnam war and communist insurgency was still a threat in Malaysia. The government was more worried about social activism than religious activism, which, in those pre-Iranian revolution days in Malaysia, was conservative rather than fundamentalist.
Anwar was closer to young social reformers than to the more conservative Malay Islamists represented at the political level by the Parti Islam. So, in 1982, when he decided to join the political mainstream, he opted for the one party which both occupied the central ground of Malay politics and offered the only realistic avenue for a Malay with national political ambitions-UMNO.
He easily made the transition from Abim to UMNO, then to parliament and a ministerial job. He was close to the pragmatic Mahathir, while his Abim past gave him credentials which helped to ward off challenges from Parti Islam. As a minister he may not have been especially effective; critics said he preferred to read and talk rather than to act. But his grassroots support was strengthened by stints at the agriculture and education ministries, and his appointment as finance minister in 1991 gave him access to the most effective lever of power in Malaysian politics-money. Charm and erudition, added to his Muslim and Malay credentials, made him a formidable politician, a seemingly natural leader.
Mahathir's little secret
Mahathir, on the other hand, started life not as a Malay but a Malayali-the people of Kerala in south India, where his father came from. At university in Singapore, he was listed as an Indian. Perhaps this explains why he became more Malay than many Malays, all the while pursuing a politics which had scant time for Malay instincts for consensus and compromise.
The extreme pro-Malay policies with which he was associated in the late 1960s, and which he expressed in his long-banned book, The Malay Dilemma, revealed a deep frustration with traditional Malay ways. His life has been a series of battles to impose his modernising agenda on the nation. At the same time, he has maintained some visceral anti-western feelings, more familiar in the subcontinent than in Malaysia.
Mahathir is full of paradoxes on racial issues. Many of his policies have had the effect of reducing the racial element in government decisions, watering down the agenda to advance Malay interests. As a result he is well regarded by many in the Chinese business community. Yet, despite his trumpeting of Asian identity, he appears ashamed to admit his Indian heritage. In his new book, A New Deal for Asia, he writes about his father in such a way as to imply that he was a Malay dedicated to the improvement of his fellow Malays rather than the hard-working Indian immigrant and government servant that he was. No mention of Mahathir's Indian Muslim background ever appears in the media. The subject is taboo.
Nevertheless, Mahathir has been quick to promote himself as the embodiment of "Asian" identity and values, with diatribes against the west, usually couched in racial terms. Recently, he has taken to describing Anwar as a western stooge; as for the Asian crisis, it was the product of a western conspiracy which has set Asia back a generation. Mahathir, who had courted the foreign investment in export manufacturing which has created so much of Malaysia's wealth, is now the third world's scourge of foreign capital. Anwar, the Islamic teacher, is really a western liberal Trojan horse.
There has often been a big gap between Mahathir's rhetoric and his mostly pragmatic policies, but there has never been any doubt about his will to win. Anwar, by contrast, is more reasoned and sympathetic, but he lacks the killer instinct. From early 1998, Anwar had sought to use the regional crisis to speed the succession by identifying himself with reformasi (reform). But by gradually building a momentum for change, he reckoned without Mahathir's capacity-despite age and heart problems-for counter-attack. The prime minister was egged on by those around him, notably Daim Zainuddin, who had been finance minister before Anwar (and is now back in the job). Daim associates had most to lose from Anwar's new-found commitment to fighting cronyism. Anwar had created some of his own crony capitalists through government contracts and bank credit, but Daim's boys-plus at least one Mahathir relative-were bigger.
Ironically, the Asian crisis was indirectly the cause of Anwar's downfall, not Mahathir's (so far). Back in May 1997, Mahathir indicated that he might leave Anwar in charge while he took a three-month break. He did not seem uncomfortable that Anwar was espousing more liberal principles and "new generation" ideas. But the Asian crisis broke in the middle of it. Mahathir seems to have set his heart on seeing the crisis through, while Anwar, as finance minister, had the uncomfortable task of pursuing financial orthodoxies-rais
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15 09 2008
September 15, 2008Azly Rahman dr.azly.rahman@gmail.com
http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/
To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we endThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish'd.
— from William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Saudara RPK,
I hope they are treating you well, in this holy month of Ramadhan that is turning our nation into our Ramallah.
I write in a state of being free while you languish in sadness incarcerated by those in their dying days breathing painfully.
They say that you are anti-Islam and anti-government. The are wrong on both counts. You are a great defender not only of Islam but of other faiths. You are a great defender of a sane government yet to be installed and one that will gladly set you free.
They are fearing not you nor the voices of conscience no longer in the wilderness; they are fearing themselves – their Inner Self – that they are answering to in their scramble to satisfy their greed for material wealth and lust for power.
They have not made you a bankrupt, RPK. They themselves are drowned in riches that will bury them.Sdr. RPK. I hope your incarceration will be the brief. So too will be of the others.The rakyat feels that the present government will not be the one freeing you. A new one will.
Below I reproduce a tribute to you I wrote sometime ago.
——————————————————————————————————
There is so much sadness in our nation as we bemoan the imprisonment of a voice of conscience manifested in this individual called Raja Petra Kamaruddin.
There is so much anger in our consciousness as we wonder what justice denied can do to us as we see the rot in our cultural values and political lives — right in front of our eyes, feasted through the media.
Raja Petra is seeking deep in his inner self and journeying deep into the archeology of his consciousness and into the history of his self and his ancestors, seeking solace and guidance in what next to be done in this world in which the self argues and revolts against systems of oppression. His psyche and the journey of his soul perhaps bring him to a hill in Melaka some several centuries ago — a place where the legendary philosopher-king and the Bugis warrior stood on a hill riddled with bullets from the advancing Dutch colonials. Raja Haji died standing .
Raja Petra is a gifted human being who is showing us what Henry David Thoreau, the American transcendentalist, spoke about "civil disobedience. He is what the philosopher Karl Jaspers reminded us of the urge to disobey and ideology that has become corrupt to the core and has employed the state apparatuses to silence those who speak truth to power.
Raja Petra is what Che Guevara means to Malaysians, a gung-ho revolutioner whose interest in motorcycles helped him craft his own hugely successful "motorcycle diaries" and helped him symbolize and embody the free-wheeling spirit of Americanism of the "Easy Rider era".
Raja Petra is the symbol of the yearning in us to break free and to let out these "screams of consciousness" so that we may learn to understand better what actually is the problem with this nation that needs therapy as a consequence of its obsession with law and order it creates and it destroys. It is the Brahma-Shiva-Vishnu of politics that we are seeing at play in the cosmic cycle, this karma of Malaysian politics that is meeting its end of the yuga as consequences to the production of many duryodanas (Durjanas) in the process of birth and rebirth.
Raja Petra is a Bugis warrior who installs kings and umpires and players in this game of politics we all are asked to play for fifty years. He make us conscious of the complexities of power relations, the roles of individuals in installing ideologies, the power of institutions in designing "inscriptions that alienate people" and helps us understand the nature of Malaysia's interlocking directorates — of who owns what and what are the consequences of these.
Raja Petra is a commander-in-chief of a movement that exists in cyberspace and orchestrates the powerful dialogues that send shivers to the spines of those who cheats in this political game.
Raja Petra has shown us what jihad means and how we must carry on this revolution to its final destiny — a republic of virtue in which philosophy reigns supreme over ideology, whatever the ideology may be.
Raja Petra will be out soon, to carry on the revolution in the consciousness of men and women — a perpetual revolution that forces us to look at ourselves as historical beings and wonder "what have we done to make this country as it is in which justice is denied, delayed, and dictated by the few."
But there will always be Divine Justice, if one believes in the power of the Divine — in a Just God and God of Mercy and Compassionate who works in mysterious ways and one who works through the agency called human beings — that will make things end well, even if all is not well in the beginning of things.
"Man proposes God disposes", many have said. In us all, in the humiliation wrought upon this human being called Raja Petra and in the imprisonment of this voice of conscience, lies the mystery of revelation of justice. We shall see what lies ahead. We must, however continue to become makers of history — to protest either silently or out loud either in solitude or with others in pomp and pageantry, protest we must as we are essentially human beings born free with natural rights endowed by the Creator. Borrowing Rousseau, we believe that "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains…"
Protest we must. Investigate we must too. Demands we will orchestrate in order to have corrupt men and women, powers abusers amongst us, and swindling robber-barons amidst us to be brought to justice in the court of law that shall be governed by the people, through the will of the rakyat.
The rakyat awaits your homecoming, a candlelight vigil will adorn the street in front of the prison-industrial complex built by those who designed architecture of structural-violence, unseen by the naked eyes of the rakyat. Like the candles that await Sita Devi and like the candle-lights that bathes Jalaluddin Rumi, the light from the rakyat soothes and calms your bruised spirit in their patient wait for your freedom.
A grandchild of that Bugis warrior prince, a philosopher-ruler, better that many a prince Machiavelli pays tribute to– you are a voice of conscience and you shall be free. Free at last.. free at last…
Hang in there, RPK. This is your bohemian rhapsody. Hang in there for a few days, weeks, Saudara RPK.This is my humble gift to thee. May these words renew your spirit.
And the rakyat will not take it to the streets either. They will stay home and watch the soap opera on race and religion played to an audience of none. They will wait and see which government will set you free.
Here is Shakespeare's piece for thee, in its entirety:To be, or not to be (from Hamlet 3/1)
To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause: there's the respectThat makes calamity of so long life;For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,The insolence of office and the spurnsThat patient merit of the unworthy takes,When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,To grunt and sweat under a weary life,But that the dread of something after death,The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pith and moment.
With this regard their currents turn awry,And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisonsBe all my sins remember'd.
IN HONOR OF RPK, TERESA KOK, AND ALL THOSE DETAINED INDEFINITELY, PLEASE POST APPROPRIATE COMMENTS ONLY; COMMENTS CALLING FOR PEACE AND CALM IN TIMES OF MANUFACTURED CHAOS.
RPK AND THOSE DETAINED WOULD APPRECIATE THIS, I AM SURE. MAY GOD SAVE THIS NATION AND INSTALL JUSTICE AND EQUALITY FOR ALL RACES.
STAY CALM, BE UNITED IN DIVERSITY — THE ISSUE IS NEITHER RACE NOR RELIGION. IT IS ABOUT A PEACEFUL TRANSITION OF POWER AND THE DECONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL POLITICS.
Azly Rahman
« UMNO in deeper crisis: A Step Backwards and Return to Semangat-46(?)
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Date : 15 September 2008
Categories : Democracy
4 responses to "To RPK, Teresa and ISA detainess from Azly"
15 09 2008
Mr Bean (00:28:05) :
I'm afraid Azly is way over the top on this one!
15 09 2008
dinobeano (00:35:16) :
Let us see how Azly will respond to your comment, Mr. Bean. He visits this blog regularly. —Din Merican
15 09 2008
omarkhayyam (01:00:15) :
guys,
"And the rakyat will not take it to the streets either. They will stay home and watch the soap opera on race and religion played to an audience of none. They will wait and see which government will set you free "
how true
this seems so true with Malaysians ! i mean i have 60 sumthin languishing in prison … an innocent reporter having nightmare of her life yet damn it people actually shut themselves in their air-con rooms with soap opera or go to THR concerts at PISA
and this same group will be decrying their fate when the government screws them up
cheers
15 09 2008
Mr Smith (01:21:00) :
RPK's life in danger, according to Haris.
http://harismibrahim.wordpress.com/
To RPK, Teresa and ISA detainess from Azly
15 09 2008
September 15, 2008Azly Rahman dr.azly.rahman@gmail.com
http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/
To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we endThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish'd.
— from William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Saudara RPK,
I hope they are treating you well, in this holy month of Ramadhan that is turning our nation into our Ramallah.
I write in a state of being free while you languish in sadness incarcerated by those in their dying days breathing painfully.
They say that you are anti-Islam and anti-government. The are wrong on both counts. You are a great defender not only of Islam but of other faiths. You are a great defender of a sane government yet to be installed and one that will gladly set you free.
They are fearing not you nor the voices of conscience no longer in the wilderness; they are fearing themselves – their Inner Self – that they are answering to in their scramble to satisfy their greed for material wealth and lust for power.
They have not made you a bankrupt, RPK. They themselves are drowned in riches that will bury them.Sdr. RPK. I hope your incarceration will be the brief. So too will be of the others.The rakyat feels that the present government will not be the one freeing you. A new one will.
Below I reproduce a tribute to you I wrote sometime ago.
——————————————————————————————————
There is so much sadness in our nation as we bemoan the imprisonment of a voice of conscience manifested in this individual called Raja Petra Kamaruddin.
There is so much anger in our consciousness as we wonder what justice denied can do to us as we see the rot in our cultural values and political lives — right in front of our eyes, feasted through the media.
Raja Petra is seeking deep in his inner self and journeying deep into the archeology of his consciousness and into the history of his self and his ancestors, seeking solace and guidance in what next to be done in this world in which the self argues and revolts against systems of oppression. His psyche and the journey of his soul perhaps bring him to a hill in Melaka some several centuries ago — a place where the legendary philosopher-king and the Bugis warrior stood on a hill riddled with bullets from the advancing Dutch colonials. Raja Haji died standing .
Raja Petra is a gifted human being who is showing us what Henry David Thoreau, the American transcendentalist, spoke about "civil disobedience. He is what the philosopher Karl Jaspers reminded us of the urge to disobey and ideology that has become corrupt to the core and has employed the state apparatuses to silence those who speak truth to power.
Raja Petra is what Che Guevara means to Malaysians, a gung-ho revolutioner whose interest in motorcycles helped him craft his own hugely successful "motorcycle diaries" and helped him symbolize and embody the free-wheeling spirit of Americanism of the "Easy Rider era".
Raja Petra is the symbol of the yearning in us to break free and to let out these "screams of consciousness" so that we may learn to understand better what actually is the problem with this nation that needs therapy as a consequence of its obsession with law and order it creates and it destroys. It is the Brahma-Shiva-Vishnu of politics that we are seeing at play in the cosmic cycle, this karma of Malaysian politics that is meeting its end of the yuga as consequences to the production of many duryodanas (Durjanas) in the process of birth and rebirth.
Raja Petra is a Bugis warrior who installs kings and umpires and players in this game of politics we all are asked to play for fifty years. He make us conscious of the complexities of power relations, the roles of individuals in installing ideologies, the power of institutions in designing "inscriptions that alienate people" and helps us understand the nature of Malaysia's interlocking directorates — of who owns what and what are the consequences of these.
Raja Petra is a commander-in-chief of a movement that exists in cyberspace and orchestrates the powerful dialogues that send shivers to the spines of those who cheats in this political game.
Raja Petra has shown us what jihad means and how we must carry on this revolution to its final destiny — a republic of virtue in which philosophy reigns supreme over ideology, whatever the ideology may be.
Raja Petra will be out soon, to carry on the revolution in the consciousness of men and women — a perpetual revolution that forces us to look at ourselves as historical beings and wonder "what have we done to make this country as it is in which justice is denied, delayed, and dictated by the few."
But there will always be Divine Justice, if one believes in the power of the Divine — in a Just God and God of Mercy and Compassionate who works in mysterious ways and one who works through the agency called human beings — that will make things end well, even if all is not well in the beginning of things.
"Man proposes God disposes", many have said. In us all, in the humiliation wrought upon this human being called Raja Petra and in the imprisonment of this voice of conscience, lies the mystery of revelation of justice. We shall see what lies ahead. We must, however continue to become makers of history — to protest either silently or out loud either in solitude or with others in pomp and pageantry, protest we must as we are essentially human beings born free with natural rights endowed by the Creator. Borrowing Rousseau, we believe that "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains…"
Protest we must. Investigate we must too. Demands we will orchestrate in order to have corrupt men and women, powers abusers amongst us, and swindling robber-barons amidst us to be brought to justice in the court of law that shall be governed by the people, through the will of the rakyat.
The rakyat awaits your homecoming, a candlelight vigil will adorn the street in front of the prison-industrial complex built by those who designed architecture of structural-violence, unseen by the naked eyes of the rakyat. Like the candles that await Sita Devi and like the candle-lights that bathes Jalaluddin Rumi, the light from the rakyat soothes and calms your bruised spirit in their patient wait for your freedom.
A grandchild of that Bugis warrior prince, a philosopher-ruler, better that many a prince Machiavelli pays tribute to– you are a voice of conscience and you shall be free. Free at last.. free at last…
Hang in there, RPK. This is your bohemian rhapsody. Hang in there for a few days, weeks, Saudara RPK.This is my humble gift to thee. May these words renew your spirit.
And the rakyat will not take it to the streets either. They will stay home and watch the soap opera on race and religion played to an audience of none. They will wait and see which government will set you free.
Here is Shakespeare's piece for thee, in its entirety:To be, or not to be (from Hamlet 3/1)
To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause: there's the respectThat makes calamity of so long life;For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,The insolence of office and the spurnsThat patient merit of the unworthy takes,When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,To grunt and sweat under a weary life,But that the dread of something after death,The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pith and moment.
With this regard their currents turn awry,And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisonsBe all my sins remember'd.
IN HONOR OF RPK, TERESA KOK, AND ALL THOSE DETAINED INDEFINITELY, PLEASE POST APPROPRIATE COMMENTS ONLY; COMMENTS CALLING FOR PEACE AND CALM IN TIMES OF MANUFACTURED CHAOS.
RPK AND THOSE DETAINED WOULD APPRECIATE THIS, I AM SURE. MAY GOD SAVE THIS NATION AND INSTALL JUSTICE AND EQUALITY FOR ALL RACES.
STAY CALM, BE UNITED IN DIVERSITY — THE ISSUE IS NEITHER RACE NOR RELIGION. IT IS ABOUT A PEACEFUL TRANSITION OF POWER AND THE DECONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL POLITICS.
Azly Rahman
Comments : 3 Comments » Categories : Democracy
UMNO in deeper crisis: A Step Backwards and Return to Semangat-46(?)
14 09 2008
www.malaysiakini.com
Athi Veeranggan September 14, 2008
The government crackdown on Friday where three individuals were arrested under the Internal Security Act indicates that all is not well in the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition.
MCPX
The arrest of blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin, Sin Chew Daily senior journalist Tan Hoon Cheng and DAP MP Teresa Kok under the tough security law - which provides for detention without trial - has irked many journalists, politicians and social activists.
PAS Parit Buntar MP Dr Mujahid Yusof Rawa argued it was unfair to arrest a journalist for doing her job while "the man who spat the venom roams free".
Contacted after Tan's arrest on Friday, suspended UMNO chieftain Ahmad Ismail - the man who allegedly made the racist remarks reported by Tan - appeared to be in a jovial mood in Kuala Lumpur and was not perturbed by the incident.
However, within hours of Tan's arrest, a large group of journalists, politicians, social activists as well as members of the public gathered outside the Penang police headquarters in Georgetown to show their support for the journalist.
Another crowd gathered outside the Central Seberang Perai district police headquarters in Bandar Baru Perda, Bukit Mertajam, where the reporter was held for three hours before she was transferred to the state headquarters.
A candlelight vigil was also held to protest against the use of the draconian ISA.
Scores of politicians from the state's ruling party DAP, PAS and even Gerakan and MCA arrived at the scene to condemn the arrest.
'Face-saving measure'
Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, himself a former ISA detainee, said he could understand what the trio were experiencing.
"Please don't ask me about my ordeal. I don't want anyone to suffer it," the DAP secretary-general told the media.
"Their arrest was against universal human rights, democratic values and press freedom," added Penang DAP publicity secretary Wong Hon Wai.
Some felt the presence of Gerakan and MCA politicians was a 'face-saving' measure to avoid blame over their role in the Ahmad controversy."If not for them and Penang UMNO leaders, things would not have blown up," observed Hindu Action Network coordinator G Mugunthan.
He described Penang Gerakan's 200-metre anti-ISA march from its headquarters to Sin Chew's Georgetown office on Saturday as a publicity stunt.
Gerakan secretary-general Chia Kwang Chye and vice-president Dr Teng Hock Nan were there to also expressed their displeasure against the ISA detention.
But when asked whether BN leaders, who blew Ahmad's infamous remarks out of proportion, should also be arrested, both remained tightlipped.
"They would not feel sorry because they want to regain their lost power at all cost," said an anti-ISA activist, adding that Ahmad's episode was a 'typical BN drama' to fish in troubled waters.
Umno in turmoil?
Activist Anil Netto linked the ISA detentions with UMNO's infighting over the 2010 transition plan and the much-touted Anwar Ibrahim's Sept 16 political coup.
Many have alleged that the Ahmad controversy was choreographed by UMNO-BN 'to create a chilling political atmosphere via communalism' so as to justify a massive crackdown on government dissidents.
The Sin Chew report on Ahmad's speech belittling Chinese Malaysians as "immigrants squatting in the country" was first played up by BN components - MCA and Gerakan - before DAP followed suit to lodge a series of police reports.
While DAP kept its distance from turning it into a racial issue, MCA and Gerakan harped on the matter.
Many felt that the imbroglio would have ended if Ahmad had emulated Perak's Sungai Rapat assemblyperson Hamidah Osman, who promptly apologised after uttering racist remarks against Indian Malaysians in June.
The unapologetic Ahmad was subsequently suspended by the party, but it was a case of too little, too late.
Some political analysts claimed that the Ahmad controversy and ISA detentions were scripted and directed by hidden hands to topple the premier to pre-empt Sept 16.
"It's the same classic story of an UMNO-BN screenplay to tense up the situation so that it can strengthen its waning power," said Mujahid.
On such previous occasions, UMNO was successful in resurrecting its power, but this time, it might not succeed due to several factors.
Chief among them is that the opposition is now led by a multi-racial coalition. Other factors include the prompt dissemination of information via the Internet, international pressure, widespread disenchantment against BN and possible royal intervention.
Like a lit candle spurting briefly before its demise, many view the latest incident as a desperate attempt by the Umno-BN government to stop the inevitable.
Razaleigh-Muhyiddin 'dream team'
It is also speculated that turmoil has besieged Umno, with a faction within the party forming a 'dream team' against party leader Abdullah and his deputy, Najib.
"It would reunite two of the biggest rivals UMNO has ever seen - Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah. And go beyond that," said Singapore's bilingual
MyPaper in a report on Friday - the day the crackdown was launched.
Former UMNO president Mahathir had quit the party in March and vowed to return only when his successor Abdullah is no longer at the helm.
The report stated that last Saturday's meeting of "Umno veterans" was not merely an effort to bring back Mahathir, but would also change the power equation in UMNO and put the 2010 transition plan in jeopardy.
"Mahathir will now reportedly throw his support behind Tengku Razaleigh, the man who came closest to defeating him in an UMNO election.
"Muhyiddin, who has publicly said Abdullah should not wait until 2010 to step down, could be Tengku Razaleigh's running mate in this Dream Team."
However, the report claimed that Muhyiddin has told friends he would be more than happy to step back for Rais Yatim, the veteran foreign minister.
According to the report, the 'dream team' would also include Mahathir's son Mukhriz, who will be gunning for the UMNO Youth chief post in December's party polls.
The newspaper also quoted a Razaleigh aide as saying that the prospects of a 'dream team' is giving the incumbent leaders sleepless nights.
"With the support of Mahathir, Muhyiddin and Rais, Tengku Razaleigh will definitely get the minimum number of nominations needed to contest the No 1 post," said the aide, who was not named.
Quoting sources, MyPaper also reported that Najib was so worried that he sought an appointment to see Mahathir and the duo met early last week.
"There have been no press reports on the meeting, but MyPaper understands that Mahathir made it clear to Najib that he was 'quite committed' to the dream team," read the report.
Comments : 24 Comments » Categories : 2008 Elections
Zaid Ibrahim, In Good Faith, Do it, Resign
14 09 2008
Law Minister threatens to quit over ISA
Beh Lih Yi September 14, 2908
De facto Law Minister Zaid Ibrahim today threatened to resign if the government continued to use the Internal Security Act, which he described as 'unjust'.
MCPX
The outspoken Barisan Nasional politician also called for the immediate release of DAP MP Teresa Kok and controversial blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin who were held under the security law which provides for detention without trial.
"We have a government that commits to laws and reforms, we can't be using old-style politics or resort to creating fear. We have laws and they (the detainees) can be charged in court.
"I am trying to meet with Prime Minister (Abdullah Ahmad Badawi) this week to convey to him my position. If (he considers) my position untenable, I will leave," he told
Malaysiakini in a telephone interview from Kota Baru, Kelantan.
The minister, who is a lawyer by training, held a press conference in Kota Baru earlier, where he also spoke on the same matter.Use ISA to fight terror
Zaid, who is the minister in the Prime Minister's Department overseeing legal matters, said his position on the ISA is that the law should only be used to curb terrorism, the reason why it was enacted.
"The problem with the ISA now is that it is used against certain people, it is a very unjust law," he added.
The ISA is a relic from the British which used the law to battle the communist insurgency. The Act earned notoriety after it was invoked by the government to stifle dissent, leading many to call for its abolition.
However, the government has continued to defend the relevance of the law on the grounds of national security.
Commenting further, Zaid said: "I am very sad that people like Teresa (right), who I know personally, can be seen as a threat. I can't see how a journalist doing her duty or even Raja Petra can be seen as a national threat.
"If their statements upset certain people, let the police investigate," the minister said, adding that he did not see the need for the government to use such a "strong-arm tactic."Zaid, who is the former Kota Baru MP, was made a senator and named as minister in charge of legal affairs during the cabinet reshuffle by premier Abdullah in March.
His appointment was lauded by many quarters, especially within the legal fraternity, as it was seen as a gesture by the prime minister to honour his pledge for judiciary reforms.
'A setback to judiciary reforms'
However, Zaid lamented that the latest ISA arrests dealt a blow to his six-month-long task of trying to regenerate the judiciary.
In relation to the concept of collective responsibility, the minister acknowledged that his views on certain matters do not go down well with his cabinet colleagues.
"I don't want to make it difficult for him (Abdullah). If my views are inconsistent or unsuitable (to that of the cabinet's), I can leave the government.
"It is a setback (on my work). The government wanted to change certain things otherwise they don't need me (to be in the cabinet)," he said.
Friday's ISA crackdown began with Raja Petra, who has targeted government figures on his website Malaysia Today. He was detained at 1.10pm.
Tan Hoon Cheng, a journalist for the Chinese language Sin Chew Daily, was later arrested at about 8.30pm.
She was detained in connection with her report regarding the derogatory remarks made by an Umno leader against the Chinese community which led to a national uproar.
Close to midnight, DAP MP and Selangor senior state exco Teresa Kok was detained outside her condominium.
The arrests elicited a round of strong protests from all quarters, including those within the BN component parties.
Journalist Tan was released yesterday after being held for less than 24 hours and Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar explained that her detention was "to ensure her safety."
http://www.malaysiakini.com/
Comments : 33 Comments » Categories : Democracy, Judiciary
Kenyataan Akhbar Pakatan Rakyat
14 09 2008
Penahanan ISA Tindakan Zalim
13hb. September 2008
Kepimpinan Pakatan Rakyat yang bertemu hari ini membantah sekeras-kerasnya tindakan terdesak kerajaan yang menangkap beberapa individu iaitu YB Teresa Kok, Raja Petra Kamarudin dan Tan Hoon Cheng di bawah akta zalim Akta Keselamatan Dalam Negeri (ISA). Kami mendesak pihak kerajaan agar membebaskan segera semua tahanan tanpa syarat. Sekiranya terdapat sebarang bukti mengenai sebarang kesalahan jenayah, ia harus dibicarakan di mahkamah terbuka.
Tindakan tangkapan ini terutama apabila pemberita yang menjalankan tugas ditangkap dan bukannya individu yang mengeluarkan kenyataan, adalah bukti manipulasi UMNO yang menggunakan isu kaum untuk menakutkan rakyat. Bahkan komponen Barisan Nasional sendiri tidak menyokong tindakan kejam ini. Kami mendesak kerajaan mengotakan janji mereka bahawa tidak akan ada lagi tahanan ISA selepas ini.
Kami berharap tindakan kerajaan ini bukan merupakan percubaan awal untuk menangkap lebih ramai ahli politik pembangkang dengan tujuan menggagalkan usaha Pakatan Rakyat membentuk kerajaan dalam masa terdekat.
Suasana tidak stabil yang nampaknya sengaja ditimbulkan oleh pihak kerajaan mengundang rasa tidak tenteram di kalangan rakyat terbanyak dan boleh mengancam keselamatan negara. Sehubungan itu Pakatan Rakyat bersetuju untuk mengambil beberapa tindakan:
1) Mencadangkan pertemuan tertutup antara wakil Pakatan Rakyat dan YAB Perdana Menteri dalam masa terdekat bagi membincangkan soal keselamatan negara dan masa depan politik Malaysia.
2) Mengadakan himpunan secara aman bersama Kerajaan Negeri Selangor di stadium Kelana Jaya pada malam 15 September 2008 bagi merayakan Hari Malaysia.
YB Dato' Seri Anwar IbrahimKetua UmumPKR
YB Lim Kit Siang,Ketua Ahli ParlimenDAP
YB Dato' Seri Abdul Hadi AwangPresidenPAS
ISA Detention is Despotic Attempt
The Pakatan Rakyat leadership who met today vehemently opposes the desperate move by the government in detaining a few individuals, namely YB Teresa Kok, Raja Petra Kamarudin and Tan Hoon Cheng, under the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA). We demand for the immediate release of all detainees without any conditions. If there are any evidence to implicate them, they should be tried in open court.
The detention especially on the reporter on duty instead of the individual who issued the statement, is a proof of UMNO's incessant manipulation of the racial sentiment to raise fear among the people. Even the Barisan Nasional components themselves are not supporting such a devious act. We demand that the government stick with their promise that there will be no more ISA detentions after this.
We hope that the government action is not a beginning of mass arrest of opposition leaders in their attempt to thwart the of Pakatan Rakyat to form a government.
The image unstable situation is staged by the government to plant fear and anxiety in the people and can be a cause for national unrest. Therefore the Pakatan Rakyat has agreed to take several actions:
1) To propose for an urgent closed door meeting between our representative and the Prime Minister to discuss about national security and the future of Malaysian politics.
2) To organise together with Selangor State government a peaceful gathering at Kelana Jaya Stadium on the eve of September 16th to celebrate the Malaysian Day.
YB Dato' Seri Anwar IbrahimKetua UmumPKR
YB Lim Kit Siang,Ketua Ahli ParlimenDAP
YB Dato' Seri Abdul Hadi AwangPresidenPAS
Comments : 12 Comments » Categories :
Democracy, Politics
Khoo Kay Peng: Che Det Should Speak for Himself
14 09 2008
September 13, 2008
Dr M's recent statement about the Chinese Malaysians being more interested in business and would readily accept race based politics shows how outdated he is as a politician.
At the same time he highlighted the some possible actions which could be taken against the Chinese community should they voice out their dissatisfaction against the government.
He said:
"Even hawkers and small traders; the subcontractors, the retail shops owners are unhappy with the government. They are however very cautious about criticising Datuk Seri Abdullah but when pressed they admit that they wanted Abdullah out but dared not say it aloud for fear of being accused of rejecting Malay leadership.
"They also worry about their businesses being singled out for some unpleasant treatment like being investigated by the Inland Revenue Board," he wrote in his blog today.
Must Dr M be reminded that these tactics if used are a continuation from his era? As the premier, he had perfected the art of political persecution against those who went against him - those detained during the Operasi Lallang and Anwar Ibrahim.
Raja Petra's ISA detention today resembles a common dirty tactic used during his era to detain and silence political opponents. Dr M should not underestimate Malaysians and their level of political maturity. Most Chinese Malaysians and other races (including the Malays) were more disturbed by the Keris waving issue at the UMNO's general assembly than the incompetence of Abdullah Badawi.
Abdullah is seen as incompetent because he could not manage and discipline a bunch of racist members/leaders in his party.
Dr M must not be surprised to hear that we supported Abdullah in 2004 because he promised to initiate reforms to get us out of the rot and excesses of the Mahathir era which was an epitome of racism, abrasive and highhanded politics, corruption and nepotism.
Abdullah as an individual is less spiteful than Dr M. We did not and should not criticize his personal character but his political and leadership incompetence. Then again, as his ex-boss and the one who put Abdullah in his current position, Dr M must shoulder most of the blame for the state of politics we have experienced today.
Who turned all other non-UMNO component parties in BN into small pussy cats? Dr Mahathir. Yet, Dr Mahathir insisted that the votes for the opposition were not due to a desire to replace BN with Pakatan Rakyat, but were actually protest votes. He said,"But is it protest against the BN parties? Is it a rejection of race-based politics? I don't think so."Goodness sake, stop blaming Abdullah Badawi for everything that went wrong in this country. It started from you, Dr M. Dr M should just speak for himself and not for 6.5 million Chinese Malaysians in this country.We know best what we want from politicians. SAY NO TO RACISM!
Yes, Dr M has proven to us that he is a bygone, a relic of his generation. I reckon many of his generation are more progressive than the ex-premier to suggest that Chinese Malaysians do not mind race-based politics.
Posted by Khoo Kay Peng
Comments :
22 Comments » Categories : Politics
Barisan Nasional on the run (?)
14 09 2008
http://www.malaysiakini.com/
by Dean Johns
After its general election fright, Barisan Nasional's first ploy was to stand and fight. But instead of successfully counter-attacking by cleaning up its act and enacting the reforms the prime minister keeps promising, it fought as dirty as ever.
MCPX
It hit Anwar Ibrahim with a new sodomy charge, blocking Malaysia-Today.net, threatened to throw the immensely-popular Raja Petra Kamarudin into jail, and then employed race and money as weapons in the Permatang Puah by-election
But all these assaults have only strengthened the resolve of the majority of the rakyat to run BN out of office. And, with Anwar back in parliament, heading the opposition and confidently predicting he'll get enough crossovers to win government, BN's resolve to fight is increasingly turning to thoughts of flight.
How else to explain the extraordinary fact that, instead of staying around in this hour of peril, and helping govern the country, 40 or so Barisan Nasional MP's have run off for a "retreat" to study agriculture in Taiwan.
I say 40 "or so" because figures vary as to how many have gone. In fact the whole expedition has been so sudden, strange and confused that it's become a running joke.
According to the first report I saw, BN Backbenchers Club (BBC) deputy chairperson Bung Mokhtar Radin sent BN MPs a SMS message reading "BN BBC has received approval to hold a retreat overseas from Sept 7 to Sept 19. The attendance of all MPs is compulsory."
The choice of the term "retreat" was a little unfortunate, I thought, given that many would leap to the obvious conclusion that the jaunt was timed to prevent MPs from jumping onto the PKR bandwagon by Anwar's stated deadline of Sept 16.
And of course that's what most people did. According to a Malaysiakini story I saw, Mas Gading (Sarawak) BN MP Dr Tiki Lafe told The Borneo Post that the opposition could make use of the BN trip "to create all kinds of wild rumours".
He also ventured the opinion that: "As the time is now considered 'critical', we have to be more practical. When the opposition is boasting of taking over the government everyday, there is more reason why we should be in our respective constituency."
Tiki reportedly added that he hoped that "his criticism of the retreat would not be interpreted as an intention to defect to Pakatan Rakyat and that people should not question his loyalty to BN".
Less temperate and accommodating in his remarks was an unnamed Johor BN MP quoted by Wan Hamidi Hamid and Shannon Teoh in The Malaysian Insider as declaring that "This is the most stupid idea I have ever heard of. How can you stop defections like this? I wonder if they have the approval of the PM".
Most of us were left wondering about not just who approved this idiotic expedition, but who was paying for it. It was variously reported as being entirely funded by one person, or self-funded by each participant. But many commentators, I noticed, cynically predicted that, as usual with BN events, the public would foot the bill.Flight to nowhere
As to where the BN MPs were running away to, the first estimate I saw was Australia, then China became a possibility, and finally the organisers settled on Taiwan.
I was personally quite relieved when Australia was dropped from consideration, as we have enough low-life of our own down here without a contingent of BN MPs compounding the problem by possibly trying to import undeclared cash and claiming not to be able to read English.
China apparently fell out of contention because the appropriate visas couldn't be arranged at such short notice.
But why, of all places, Taiwan became the default destination of the "study tour", I have no idea.
Given that Malaysian agriculture seems to consist largely of oil palm, more oil palm and even more oil palm, why run off to a country whose principal farm products are, according to my quick Google search, rice, betel nuts, pineapples, mangoes, sugar cane, watermelons, tea, bamboo shoots, pears and peanuts?
And in any case, if the study is in any way serious, why send a bunch of slow-learners like BN MPs? If they're capable of becoming better informed, why not send them to study something that might improve their performance of their parliamentary duties, like good governance, say, or anti-corruption techniques or judicial, electoral and police reform?
Or, on the other hand, what about flying them off, as some bloggers suggested, to somewhere like Zimbabwe to see and experience for themselves the kind of agricultural economy Malaysia can look forward to if the government they're part of stays in power long enough?
All joking aside though, who cares where they go or what they pretend to study there, or even who's paying the bill, as long as the whole scam is a sure sign that PKR has the BN government on the run?
As Lim Kit Siang said in a statement the other day: "Despite maintaining a public stance of stoic indifference, there is no doubt that with the daily countdown to Sept 16, there is an increasing panic in Umno and BN leadership ranks over the degree of cohesion, solidarity and allegiance of the 75 BN backbenchers."
Lambasting BBC chairperson Tiong King Sing for "hatching such a stupid idea" as to treat MPs "like delinquent children who have to be packed off overseas and secluded from mischief," he made the very pertinent point that "If there are BN MPs who are minded to leave BN … nothing can stop them from proceeding with their fateful decisions any time after their return to Malaysia after Sept 16."
Lim's absolutely right. Unless the runaways seek asylum in Taiwan, they'll fly home to face the choice of turning-over to PKR to help run the country better, or staying with a coalition whose ruinous monopoly on power has given it far too long a run for its – or rather the rakyat's – money.
Comments : 43 Comments » Categories : Politics
Philip Bowring: Power Play in Malaysia—A Little History
13 09 2008
August 1999 44 » Special report »
Power Play in Malaysia Buy Issue The political destruction of Anwar Ibrahim by his one-time mentor, Mahathir Mohamad, was absorbing theatre. But what does his fall mean for Malaysia's race-based populist democracy? And who will lead the country post-Mahathir?
Philip Bowring
Philip Bowring is a writer.
It is right and proper to take the side of Anwar Ibrahim, former Malaysian deputy prime minister, in his (so far) unequal struggle with his former mentor, prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad. As Mahathir prepares to strengthen his grip on power through an election likely to be held in August, Anwar is facing another set of politically motivated criminal accusations-this time, for sodomy.
The ruling coalition headed by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) is certain to remain in power. A poor result for UMNO would undermine Mahathir's position, but is unlikely to topple the man who has moulded Malaysia's race-based democracy into a unique blend of populist authoritarianism.
A martyr's crown seems to sit as easily on Anwar's head as devilish horns do on Mahathir's. But this does not explain how Anwar came to fall so quickly from heir apparent-a position he had formally held for five years, informally for ten. Anwar has been in the roughhouse of Malaysian politics for long enough to know how vicious it can be. And he has been close enough to Mahathir to know that this is a man who takes no prisoners, makes up the rules as he goes along, and plays for high stakes to ensure personal dominance over the state and, more importantly, UMNO. Anwar had been at Mahathir's side when he fought off the biggest challenge to his rule, in 1988, when former finance minister Tunku Razaleigh Hamzah almost ousted him from the leadership.
Razaleigh came within a few UMNO delegate votes of toppling Mahathir, despite his association with the biggest of the many banking scandals which have linked business and politics in Malaysia for the past two decades. Ironically, Mahathir is now using a rehabilitated Razaleigh against Anwar's supporters.
The answer to the puzzle of Anwar's fall may be that he came to believe his own propaganda-or at least that of his young associates eager for power. Mahathir, on the other hand-unusually for someone who has been in power for 18 years-appears to have had no illusions about himself. He has never courted popularity and thrives on being himself, an outsider willing to take on individuals and institutions. Scruples were not for a man whose mission was to stay in power and modernise Malaysia on his own terms.
Anwar's political roots
Anwar's ambition was to become prime minister at a time of the party's choosing, rather than allow Mahathir to hang on as long as it suited him-which, many believed, was until he died. But Anwar's ambition, unlike Mahathir's, was not matched by ruthlessness. Perhaps this derives from their respective backgrounds. Although not an aristocrat, Anwar, 52, came up through the usual Malay elite route-the Malay College at Kuala Kangsar and then on to the University of Malaya. The elegant, eloquent youth then founded an idealistic Muslim youth movement, Abim (Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia, or Islamic Youth Movement of Malaysia). Anwar was jailed briefly in 1974 for leading a demonstration of disgruntled rice farmers, an episode which suggested a youthful commitment to social justice rather than to religious extremism. This was the era of the Vietnam war and communist insurgency was still a threat in Malaysia. The government was more worried about social activism than religious activism, which, in those pre-Iranian revolution days in Malaysia, was conservative rather than fundamentalist.
Anwar was closer to young social reformers than to the more conservative Malay Islamists represented at the political level by the Parti Islam. So, in 1982, when he decided to join the political mainstream, he opted for the one party which both occupied the central ground of Malay politics and offered the only realistic avenue for a Malay with national political ambitions-UMNO.
He easily made the transition from Abim to UMNO, then to parliament and a ministerial job. He was close to the pragmatic Mahathir, while his Abim past gave him credentials which helped to ward off challenges from Parti Islam. As a minister he may not have been especially effective; critics said he preferred to read and talk rather than to act. But his grassroots support was strengthened by stints at the agriculture and education ministries, and his appointment as finance minister in 1991 gave him access to the most effective lever of power in Malaysian politics-money. Charm and erudition, added to his Muslim and Malay credentials, made him a formidable politician, a seemingly natural leader.
Mahathir's little secret
Mahathir, on the other hand, started life not as a Malay but a Malayali-the people of Kerala in south India, where his father came from. At university in Singapore, he was listed as an Indian. Perhaps this explains why he became more Malay than many Malays, all the while pursuing a politics which had scant time for Malay instincts for consensus and compromise.
The extreme pro-Malay policies with which he was associated in the late 1960s, and which he expressed in his long-banned book, The Malay Dilemma, revealed a deep frustration with traditional Malay ways. His life has been a series of battles to impose his modernising agenda on the nation. At the same time, he has maintained some visceral anti-western feelings, more familiar in the subcontinent than in Malaysia.
Mahathir is full of paradoxes on racial issues. Many of his policies have had the effect of reducing the racial element in government decisions, watering down the agenda to advance Malay interests. As a result he is well regarded by many in the Chinese business community. Yet, despite his trumpeting of Asian identity, he appears ashamed to admit his Indian heritage. In his new book, A New Deal for Asia, he writes about his father in such a way as to imply that he was a Malay dedicated to the improvement of his fellow Malays rather than the hard-working Indian immigrant and government servant that he was. No mention of Mahathir's Indian Muslim background ever appears in the media. The subject is taboo.
Nevertheless, Mahathir has been quick to promote himself as the embodiment of "Asian" identity and values, with diatribes against the west, usually couched in racial terms. Recently, he has taken to describing Anwar as a western stooge; as for the Asian crisis, it was the product of a western conspiracy which has set Asia back a generation. Mahathir, who had courted the foreign investment in export manufacturing which has created so much of Malaysia's wealth, is now the third world's scourge of foreign capital. Anwar, the Islamic teacher, is really a western liberal Trojan horse.
There has often been a big gap between Mahathir's rhetoric and his mostly pragmatic policies, but there has never been any doubt about his will to win. Anwar, by contrast, is more reasoned and sympathetic, but he lacks the killer instinct. From early 1998, Anwar had sought to use the regional crisis to speed the succession by identifying himself with reformasi (reform). But by gradually building a momentum for change, he reckoned without Mahathir's capacity-despite age and heart problems-for counter-attack. The prime minister was egged on by those around him, notably Daim Zainuddin, who had been finance minister before Anwar (and is now back in the job). Daim associates had most to lose from Anwar's new-found commitment to fighting cronyism. Anwar had created some of his own crony capitalists through government contracts and bank credit, but Daim's boys-plus at least one Mahathir relative-were bigger.
Ironically, the Asian crisis was indirectly the cause of Anwar's downfall, not Mahathir's (so far). Back in May 1997, Mahathir indicated that he might leave Anwar in charge while he took a three-month break. He did not seem uncomfortable that Anwar was espousing more liberal principles and "new generation" ideas. But the Asian crisis broke in the middle of it. Mahathir seems to have set his heart on seeing the crisis through, while Anwar, as finance minister, had the uncomfortable task of pursuing financial orthodoxies-rais
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