Foreigners going to vote in coming General Election

By Sivam Veeramuthu
The rumours have been swirling intensely for the past few months that the Barisan Nasional (BN) Government is registering foreign workers and permanent residents as voters for the coming general election. Various parties have given eye-witness accounts of vans from the National Registration Departments (NRD) heading to remote areas to conduct discreet registration exercises.

In May 2011, PKR Ampang Member of Parliament, Zubaidah Kamaruddin had also surfaced a letter allegedly written by UMNO Hulu Selangor to the Home Minister to grant citizenship to a list of 2,000 foreign workers with the pretext that they will vote for BN in the upcoming elections.

However, it was the reports in Malaysiakini yesterday providing hard-evidence that foreign permanent residents have been granted voting rights in Malaysia. What was perhaps more shocking was that within a matter of 4 hours, the status of the dubious new voters were immediately changed from permanent residents to citizens of this country in the NRD database. Essentially, these foreigners first secured their permanent residency, then became a voter and subsequently granted their citizenship.

The above cases prove beyond doubt that there is an unholy conspiracy between BN, the Election Commission as well as the NRD to cheat their way to victory in the next general election.

Alarm bells are raised over the integrity of our national security systems because of the flagrant abuse of the process and the ease at which our citizen data get manipulated. They also prove that the biometric system proposed by the Election Commission to “prevent phantom voters” is a complete non-starter. If even our NRD system can be tampered with so blatantly, there is no credible assurance that the government can provide that the biometric system proposal worth hundreds of millions of ringgit will be clean, transparent and secure.

The action of the above parties follows the Prime Minister’s rallying cry in Selangor in May 2011 for BN to “win at all costs”. While the results of 2008 took BN by surprise, they are now leaving nothing to chance and would use all tricks in the book to maintain their strangle hold on power as well as to recapture the states lost to Pakatan Rakyat.

It is also not the first that BN has awarded of citizenship to foreigners in a massive scale. They have previously done the same in Sabah with the covert “Project IC” which is also known as “Project M” where “M” denotes Mahathir. The project has cemented UMNO’s stranglehold on power and reduced the political power of the Kadazan, Dusun and Murut communities in Sabah. The outcome today in Sabah was a population explosion where naturalised “foreigners” outnumber locals in the state.

BN will use its control over the media and security apparatus to intimidate Malaysians to vote BN as seen most recently during the Bersih rally, and money will not be an object to buy votes as shown in the Sarawak state elections. And if intimidation and the buying of votes do not assure them of success, BN would blatantly cheat its way to victory.

Malaysians who are united in seeking free and fair elections will need to work doubly hard to negate the electoral malpractices committed by BN. And Malaysians seeking to achieve change in the next general election will have to work triply hard to convince those who are still in doubt over the need for change to overcome the uneven playing field in favour of BN.

Students gather to protest don’s suspension

GOMBAK: Hundreds of students today gathered to protest against the suspension of Abdul Aziz Bari, the vocal constitutional law professor with the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM).

Student leaders and their supporters, who gathered at the compound of the university’s mosque here, condemned the suspension as a “tyrannical” move and a “blatant violation” of “academic freedom”.

Several students leaders were pulled away by police and university security personnel as they try to hand a memorandum of protest to the university’s authorities.

“We detest the exploitation of institutions of higher learning to serve the interest of the power-that- be. Revoke Aziz’s suspension,” shouted Ahmad Syukri Abdul Razab of the students group SMM.

The students chanted “long live Aziz” and carried placards with “solidarity with Aziz” written on them.

Also present were leaders from opposition parties including PKR vice-presidents Tian Chua and Nurul Izzah Anwar.

Government fears education autonomy

Aziz was suspended after he described the decree made by the Sultan of Selangor following the raid by the Islamic Affairs Department (JAIS) on a church in Damansara recently as “unprecedented and inconsistent”.

The sultan had said that no one shall be penalised because there was insufficient evidence to prove proselytising by Christians during the raid although he maintained that conversion attempts are “real”.

The Umno-owned media were quick to pounce on Aziz, describing his statement as “treacherous” in what is seen as a retaliation against the political scientist’s constant criticism against the ruling party.

Speaking to FMT later, Ahmad Syukri said Aziz’s suspension was a clear signal of the government’s fear of “autonomy” in the academic sphere although it has distanced itself from IIUM’s action.

Deputy Higher Education Minister Saifuddin Abdullah had said the action against the professor was internal and not a result of government interference, but SMM and opposition leaders believe otherwise.

“What Aziz said (about the decree) was academic. It was part of an intellectual discourse. You can have a different opinion but suspension is not the way. You should counter his argument through discourse,” said Ahmad Syukri.

He added that intellectuals should be allowed to debate on “sensitive” issues, including the position of the monarch. “It’s part of academic freedom… a healthy debate to create intellectual debate,” he said.

Tarnishing Najib’s reform image

Malaysia’s universities are fast dropping in the global ranking. Race-based quotas, instead of merits-based admission and political interference, have been cited as the cause for the decline in quality.

Nurul Izzah told FMT that Aziz’s suspension reminded her of her own ordeal more than a decade ago when she was refused admission (to university) due to “political considerations”.

At the time of her application, Nurul Izzah, the Lembah Pantai MP, is the daughter of Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim who was sacked as the deputy prime minister after a fall-out with then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

“Thirteen years on, the same thing is happening to Aziz. In the face of transformation, you want to allow and accord universities the freedom they deserve,” she said in a critical reference to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s reform measures.

Opposition leaders and observers believe Najib’s transformation credentials have been tarnished by various violations of basic rights and the absence of real institutional reforms.

Prime Mininister of Bangladesh admit citizens voting rights in Malaysia

By: Sivam Veeramuthu

“We urged the Royal Commission of Inquiry established to investigate the Bangladesh prime minister’s statement on the subject”

Cutting the official website of Bangladesh PM’s Office

Sheikh Hasina was quoted testimony from www.ngoab.gov.bd – Affairs official non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the Prime Minister of the country.

According to the site, Sheikh Hasina said the Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia is easy as long as the nationality of the party vote, representing the ruling government.

She also confirmed a number of Bangladeshi workers in several sectors in Malaysia, given citizenship last year.

She said they were also given the right to vote in the General Election (GE) will come

World: To Adjust or Not To Adjust

By: Sivam Veeramuthu

The current debate on the world economic condition gives a glimpse of why economics is a very difficult subject to master. There are all the theories, which are fine in themselves because of their own internal logical consistency of varying degree of inclusiveness of factors. The main difficulty is in the diagnosis of the problem, which is subjective and based on experience and judgment. The signs are all there. The difference could be as in the judgments of Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes (however fictional).

We are all agreed that the world (the US) has gone through a serious bout of asset inflation and the bubble has burst. The adjustment has taken place, not in asset prices but in banks whose solvency has been supported by explicit government intervention. The judgment now is that the worst is over and the world can go on with business as usual.

(a) This supporters of this policy are congratulating themselves that they have done an excellent in preventing an all-out fallout and an inevitable recession which could lead to a depression.

(b) Banks have since recovered apparently and are now back on track to be as good as they had been.

The main argument against this affirmative solution is that there has been no adjustment or that the adjustment is insufficient for real change to take place. Those who had made mistakes in the market (mainly speculators) have not been punished by the market – which the market is supposed to do in order to ensure vigilance and discipline. The same people or type of people are still in charge and playing the game. There is no lesson learnt from the recent problem. The problem will repeat itself because the policy makers are looking for solutions in market behaviours that have brought the economy into problem in the first place.

Real adjustment means structural adjustment where the structure of the market and economy will have to change. There have to be new rules and policies and new ways of doing things. Those who have lost in the market must exit and those who have been disciplined and have capital will have the opportunities to buy foreclosure assets at realistic prices so that a new foundation could be built. In this adjustment, employees will be laid off and they have to readjust also through retraining to learn new and more appropriate skills.

This adjustment is necessary in order that the new world order will be able to come to an organisational structure which will be able to provide sufficient jobs for new entrants into the economy. Whilst in the long run, it may be an observable factor that the demography defines the pace of the economic growth. But, at present, the world is undergoing a truly significant change.

In the west, the baby boomers are now in the sixties and retiring. Being baby boomers, they are the largest representation in the demography. Smaller groups (non-boomers) will have to work the extra hour or so to support the boomers in their retirement. While pensions may be defined in nominal terms, that the inability of the new cohort to produce sufficient for themselves and the retirees mean that (a) there is inflation (if pension payments are appropriate) or (b) there is unemployment among the new cohort (if the aggregate demand is low as the retired boomers reduced their consumption).

In the east, China’s increased production of consumer goods has reduced per unit cost as well as increased the global participation in industrial production by workers by a significant amount – which reduces wages (first nominal and then real). This has caused the withdrawal of employment by higher-paid workers in the west. Added to this global work pool is India, in the higher value-added sector of ICT. This sharp increase in the global volume of workers means that the west (particularly the US) has resorted to solving its problem by printing money – which we had seen and still seeing. (Whether they are translating the excess liquidity into rapid loan growth now or not is moot; they had.)

Maintaining an easy money policy is politically advantageous to do. It is like giving morphine. Fiscal policy has run its limits, constrained by common sense about government debt.

I think it was Franco Modigliani who asked the question a long ago in a published paper: Should be foresake stablisation policy, when discussing the relative merits of fiscal and monetary counter-cyclical policies. This question is now moot. We are not talking about stablisation policy. The world has changed. The structure of the world economy has changed. We are now dealing with structural change.

Is it then correct that the US should counter the comparative advantage of China’s labour force with a low interest rate for its industries so that its industrial workers can compete – or that has the US actually foresaken its agriculture and manufacturing industries and now focuses on the services sector in order to compete. In the services sector, adjustments could be massive and rapid with a high casualty rate, such as venture capital, stock market, financial instruments, and all kinds of financial products. (It is no surprise that massive financial crimes occur in the US, and elsewhere.) It is also no surprise that WTO pushes for the opening in the east for the services sector.

In globalisation, the problem with using the services sector for growth is that it does not necessarily has to use local workers. Local workers may not be skilled enough or they do not have local knowledge. The services sector, in order to expand, especially for financial services, it has to tap the best brains in the countries they operate. While US firms may grow, US employment may not rise commensurately in that sector. This is the same issue for all MNCs. (It is therefore questionable for Malaysian employment that Malaysian GLCs go abroad and brought back nothing.)

These services MNCs do not need zero interest rate to flourish. They need a policy where credit is easy to get. The banks with their billions of unlent excess reserves would be most happen to fund grandiose schemes by US firms that span the globe.

By not allowing local asset values to adjust downwards, there is no scope for local businesses to flourish as old local businesses could be weighed down by high debt and a long repayment period which chew up revenue and discourage recapitalisation. Those with cash has no chance to buy assets at fair value, and they end up holding financial assets. In a world where excessive wealth is looking for a safe place to park in the financial market, there is always the problem of overvalued of financial assets, as real asset value are kept up by the inability of the market to adjust downward as governments around the world stablised their respective economies with artificial means.

Adjustments of course means hardship and unemployment; but this does not mean they do not exist today when unadjusted. For fear of a flash of pain, one may have to suffer long and quiet.

As economic adjustments are increasingly politicised, it is not surprising that unemployed youth are trying the oust the old and crumbled who are holding to their asset values through long established networks in the only means available to them. Greedy people are trying to hold on to brick and mortar or pieces of paper which enough paper wealth to last them a few generations, at the expense of the new generations of the rest of society. Future values and investments are concepts that need a rethink. In the end, other young people, provided they can get a job, will have to work for the descendants of these old rich.

Malaysian’s Right to Speak

By: Sivam Veeramuthu

The 9 July 2011 Bersih rally is significant. It shows clearly that the ordinary Malaysian citizen is now reduced to nothing but an ant for the authorities who is supposed to look after us to step on.It is the fundamental right of a Malaysian citizen to raise his or her concern over any aspect of the nation. Not to do so is to fail in one’s duty to serve the country. Does the government of the day think that after being elected into power it has the absolute power to do whatever it likes until the next election? Isn’t there any recourse in the interim?Is Malaysia still a democratic country, or is it now a dictatorship, or is it now a police state?

What happens to civil liberties? Or, don’t the authorities do not understand any of these things anymore?

The recent event has shown that while the government of the day may put on a smiling face, it may not desist from using crude methods to prevent dissent. This is dangerous.

Of all the transformations that the government is trying to institute to get the economy into high income, I fear that the current transformation of civil society from a once proud society to dirt is probably the most potent and alas! the most dreadful.

Unpleasant it may be to the government of the day, it should have the good of society at heart to let the people demonstrate the seriousness of their call for a clean election, no matter how clean the government or the election commission may insist that it is. Truth will prevail. The recent event in Thailand how that truth will eventually re-assert itself, no matter how much it may be supposed.

I do not think that the government of the day is doing itself a service with its recent actions, with collusion from an authority which should have been more competent and professional in handling such a difficult situation. It is only when a situation becomes intricate that professionals are called in. We do not seem to have any

Penang is free from the scourge of Corruption–CM Lim Guan Eng

 

Lim Guan Eng claimed that Penang has eliminated corruption as Pakatan Rakyat (PR) braces for an impending general election.

The island’s Chief Minister implied today that polls will be held within six months as this time frame will determine whether “the boldest political experiment” in the March 2008 election of “establishing a people-centric government will prevail or perish from Penang.”

“To overcome public distrust of the state government as an institution that does not help but harm the people, PR has terminated the politics of patronage, cronyism and corruption,” the DAP secretary-general said in his Malaysia Day address.

Lim added that his PR administration has emphasised the rule of law and stressed on “performance not privilege, expertise not entitlement and integrity not corruption.”“Let us embrace a future free from fear and cronyism. Let us embrace the future by embracing every Malay, Indian, Chinese, Kadazan and Iban as Malaysian brothers and sisters, Malaysian sons and daughters,” the Bagan MP said.

PR, which took a record five states and 82 federal seats in Election 2008, denying Barisan Nasional (BN) its customary two-thirds majority in Parliament, has continued to harp on corruption within the ranks of the ruling coalition.

The federal opposition has claimed that the Treasury loses up to RM10 billion in corruption annually which can be used to maintain and increase subsidies while also accusing the Najib administration of using the excuse of national security to dish out defence contracts worth up to RM16 billion in the past three years.

Although the  Abdullah administration passed the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Act in 2008 as part of a raft of reforms before Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi left office, the anti-graft body has been accused of turning a blind eye towards BN and targeting PR figures.

Two deaths in custody — DAP aide Teoh Beng Hock and senior Customs officer Ahmad Sarbaini Mohamed — have also damaged the credibility of the MACC.

In contrast, PR-held states such as Selangor and Penang have claimed that their budget surpluses are due to efforts to eliminate graft.

Najib’s Sleight of Hand

 

In his Malaysia day speech last night, Prime Minister Najib declared in the following words “I would like to announce on this historic night, the Internal Security Act 1960 will be abolished”.

However he immediately went on to say that “… two new pieces of legislation will be formulated under Article 149 of the Federal Constitution … to maintain peace and well-being”.

The obnoxious Article 149

Some of us may not have immediately understood the ominous meaning of the use of those words “Article 149”. Article 149 is the obnoxious part of the Constitution that allows the draconian ISA to exist as a valid law. If Article 149 were not there, the ISA and all other laws that provide for detention without trial in this country such as the Dangerous Drugs ( Special Preventive Measures) 1985 would be struck down as unconstitutional and void.

Article 149 allows such laws to violate the fundamental rights part of the Constitution such as Article 5, 9 and 10 which guarantee the protection of public trial, amongst other protections, and yet operate “legally”, so to speak.

So what did Najib really do yesterday night? In a disingenuous manner, he left some Malaysians thinking he was making a ‘historic move’ and ridding this country of the evil ISA and detention without trial for good. Nothing can be further from the truth. He was doing verbal sleight of hand. Now you see it, now you don’t!

He did not quite explain that with the two new laws to be formulated under Article 149, he would be in fact be reinstating detention without trial, albeit supposedly in a more palatable fashion which is yet to be seen.

In other words, he only stated his intention to remove the ISA and reinstate it again in new clothes we are yet to see. The proverbial old wine in new bottle?

The actions of a despotic regime

Platitudes about ‘political transformation’ and ‘practising functional and inclusive democracy’ and ‘becoming a full-fledged developed nation’ are meaningless if Malaysians are stlll to suffer detention with trial with power given to the Minister to order indefinite detention.

Even if Najib says that the power of the Minister to detain will be only for ‘terrorism’, let us not forget that the detention of Saari Sungib ( now ADUN Hulu Kelang), Tian Chua ( now Member of Parliament for Batu) , activist Hishamuddin Rais and 7 others in April 2001 were supposedly because they were ‘stockpiling grenade launchers and Molotov cocktails’. This foolish ( because of its inherent idiocy ) assertion for which no evidence was ever produced was in a written press statement issued then by none other than the Inspector –General of Police Norian Mai.

Similarly and much more recently, Dr Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj ( Member of Parliament for Sungai Siput) and five colleagues were detained under the EO ( which works exactly like the ISA ) for allegedly being part of militant subversive communism with the only evidence being some t-shirts with Che Guevara and Abdullah CD faces, which one could buy easily down in Chow Kit market.

In other words, Najib’s mere verbal assurances that no one will be detained for political ideology are in reality meaningless platitudes because as you can see in the two examples given earlier, the police ( and the Minister by extension ) can easily present anyone especially a politician as a terrorist.

Let us not forget that this is why arbitrary detention is the hall mark of oppressive despotic regimes.

Misleading the public once again

Najib implies that the ‘special legislation’ formulated by advanced democratic nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom to handle terrorism is similar to the measures that we have had in place such as the ISA and preventive detention. This is downright misleading.

The United States reserves its obnoxious and notorious detention regime in Guantanomo Bay only for foreigners. Even then, it has been thoroughly ( and rightly ) criticized all over the world for violating fundamental rights. Malaysia on the other hand has regularly locked up and ill-treated its own loyal citizens without due process, and given Najib’s words, intends to continue to do so.

The special law in the United Kingdom only allows them to detain a problematic foreigner who if deported back to his country of origin will be subjected to torture and detention by the authorities there. Citizens in the UK would not tolerate for a minute what we do to our own people in the name of the ISA and similar laws.

Pakatan will support repeal, but maybe not the new laws

Pakatan Rakyat’s position is set out in writing in our Buku Jingga. We said that a Pakatan federal government will abolish the Internal Security Act and other laws that allow for detention without trial while simultaneously rescinding all existing emergency declarations.

We are gratified to see that Najib has decided to adopt our view that we have to unshackle ourselves from the emergency declarations of the past. The continued existence of these declarations had long been an unfortunate target for mockery both here and overseas particularly because there was no semblance of an emergency like situation anywhere in the country for decades now. Pakatan will certainly support a resolution in Parliament to rescind these declarations and will also urge that all ordinances passed there under must also be annulled forthwith without waiting for the 6 month period provided for in Article 150(7).

However we part ways with Najib in his intention to maintain the repulsive practice of detention without trial which will no place in a new era of government under Pakatan Rakyat.

We will instead undertake comprehensive reform of our police force and other security agencies. We will ensure that our police force will be given sufficient powers, training and resources in order to carry out their primary responsibilities i.e. prevent crime and maintain public order professionally efficiently and independently whilst respecting the fundamental rights of our people. 

Blast near India’s Taj Mahal injures 3

• NEW: Commandos dispatched to Agra, India
• A small bomb explodes in a hospital in Agra
• Agra is home to the famed Taj Mahal, India’s most popular tourist spot
• No motive has been determined yet

New Delhi :-  A bomb exploded Saturday at a private hospital in the tourist town of Agra, India, injuring three people.

The bomb went off at Jai Hospital’s reception counter, said Brij Lal, spokesman for Uttar Pradesh police. The hospital is about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the famed Taj Mahal, India’s most popular tourist destination.

Police called it a crude explosive, but it was still too early to determine a motive or whether it was the handiwork of terrorists.

The Home Ministry said it had dispatched commandos to Agra and was in the process of collecting evidence from the scene.

The Agra blast occurred a day after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh warned the nation’s senior police officers about India’s vulnerability.

“The security environment in the country continues to be uncertain,” Singh said in remarks at a police conference Friday. “The recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai and Delhi are grim reminders of the grave challenges posed by terrorism to our national security.”

India has suffered a spate of attacks in recent years, including the November 2008 siege of Mumbai that killed 163 people.

This month, a bomb inside a briefcase at the high court in the capital, New Delhi, killed 11 people and injured 74 others.

The Islamic extremist group Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami claimed responsibility for that attack in an e-mail to several TV news channels. Authorities have detained three suspects from the Kashmir region.

In July, 19 people were killed in three deadly blasts in Mumbai, India’s largest city and financial hub. No one has been arrested yet.

Goverment by the People,for the People and of the People

By: Sivam Veeramuthu

The nucleus of democracy is the people, people and people. The real appearance of the democracy is the rule of the people. The people’s representatives elected through free, unobstructed and transparent elections are the motor of the democracy. So people are the actual steering of the democratic rule. Regarding this, the sayings of Abraham Lincoln, President of United states of America can be quoted. With a very small sentence, such an elaborate explanation of democracy is rare: ‘Government by the people, for the people and of the people.’

In most of the countries now, democracy is established. But in Europe it is most powerful and effective. As per the historical facts, 4-5 hundred years, before the birth of Jesus Christ, the Philosophers, Aristotle, Plato etc. of Greece, first have given the outline of the democratic rule in Europe. In democratic and economic aspects, now in Europe, Germany and Switzerland are in the top position. In general, USA is now under Europe. Worst situations are in Asia and Africa. Especially, the condition of  Malaysia is very precarious.

Personally I am not a political expert or an active political worker. I want  to tell something about the conditions of democracy in Europe and Asia. On the situations of German and Malaysia democracy and lately, I have a little experience about the German people’s representative. On the politics of these two countries and with special reference to their representatives, I want to make a comparative discussion.

What we can learn from the democracy and the people’s representatives of the greatest economic and rich country of Europe? In other words, how democracy and the representatives of Malaysia can be benefitted from such experiences of Germany country and how they can be utilised in their own country.

The majority people of Malaysia are victims of the absence of the rule of law, culture of democracy and the ill-politics.

Let us come to the main point. There three pillars of democratic administration. They are: legislative, judiciary and public administration. One is dependent to the other. They control and co-ordinate each other and thus the democracy are active. All these three powers are to work with the same motive. This is people’s welfare and serving the people. One is related totally to the other. To steer these three components into the right direction is the responsibility of the politicians. Elected by the direct votes of the peoples, politicians are the upholder, career and the protector of the democracy.

Peoples get the democratic rights only when the above mentioned three systems work properly or be effective. But the in Asian countries, especially our dear Malaysia, none of these three does not seem to be working. If the systems were working, the situation of the human rights is not so deteriorated. To the political leaders and workers of all the parties, the interest of the people and the country would have the highest priority.

There is no difference between a minister and political leader with a common person  in Germany or in Europe. Amongst the politicians or high government officials there is no competition of showing their respective powers. Peoples are given here the highest priority. To the demands and the expectations of the people and for their every facility, politicians maintain always a keen attention. In Malaysia, it is quite opposite. Except the time of election, politicians do not care about the public!

In General, the duties and responsibilities of the Minister both in Germany and Malaysia are almost the same. To make new roads, foundation of the schools and other academic institutions, people’s welfare, social works, development, reforms and making of law. These are the main works of a representative. Before passing a new law, the opinions of the people is inevitable in Germany. As for example: a discussion has been started to make a new rule in the parliament. Immediately, the MP will go to his constituency. About the proposed new law, he will discuss with the people through meetings or personally. He will get the reactions of his voters.

If his voters think, the law is good and necessary, they will say in its favour. If they think this law is not good for the people (at least for their region), they will say it’s against. If people do not want, an elected MP goes even against his party on a particular matter. He will not cast his vote (neutral) or cast his vote against the bill, honouring the opinions of the voters of his area. This is the culture of political of Germany. For this, he is not to explain as a member of his political party. His obligations are first to the people and then to his party. If this would occur in Malaysia!

There are different commissions in the German Parliament. These commissions are everywhere, where democratic government is present and also in Malaysia. The three most important commissions in Germany are: To supervise the personal income and other economic aspects of the members, Defence and Intelligence. The chairmen of these three commissions are elected from the opposition parties. So the government party has no chance to manipulate these matters. Of course, no political person manipulates here. It is not found in Malaysia. We can not differentiate between personal and party-interests with those of the people’s welfare and principle.

The representatives of Germany are very much conscious about the human rights and they have adequate knowledge about it. They study much on this matter. It is very difficult to say how many members of Malaysian Parliament have the knowledge or information about human rights. And if some are aware of it, how many of them try to materialise it? The number is not definitely so much.

If Germany had now the situations like Malaysia, what would happen? The government must fall!

Najib’s Gamble

By: Sivam Veeramuthu

Since taking office, Najib has delayed economic reforms, including the introduction of a promised goods and services tax.

He has slowed down on a fuel subsidy rollback to avoid sparking anger by voters hit by rising prices.

A big street protest in July, attended by young members of the middle class angered over the slow pace of reforms, also exposed a groundswell of anger that has sent Najib’s approval ratings to 56 percent last month from 72 percent in May last year.

Najib has softened his stance on the reform of a controversial pro-ethnic majority Malay economic policy amid resistance by conservative groups who enjoy backing from some within his own party.

One of the most influential, Perkasa, has begun to question his promised political reforms. That could lead to a pushback and block their implementation.

“Malaysian politics is now in havoc and he suddenly withdraws the ISA… At the moment, I see it is more aimed to be populist rather than because of national security” :- Ibrahim Ali, head of Perkasa.

The group has in the past called for the laws to be retained for use against political dissidents, and said it would study the two new security laws Najib proposed before making an official stand.

Failure to implement the changes substantively ahead of polls could lead to the kind of a voter backlash that befell Najib’s predecessor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Abdullah led the ruling coalition to a historic 90 percent sweep of the country’s parliamentary seats in the 2004 general election on a pledge of reforms including strengthening the independence of institutions like the judiciary and police.

But he was severely punished by voters in 2008 after failing to deliver on his reform promises in the face of strong resistance by the ruling party, and was forced into early retirement the following year.

I wonder how many of those who were so captured by Abdullah’s promises feel similarly giddy after hearing the promises made by Najib.

If you answer in the affirmative, I advise you to take a sober look at Abdullah’s record and then re-examine Najib’s promises.