Tuesday 19 November 2013
BUDDHISTS IN MYANMAR PROTEST OIC’S VISIT. DON’T GIVE ANY CONCESSION TO VIOLENT ROHINGYA MUSLIMS. BAN OIC IN NON MUSLIM COUNTRIES.
Buddhist monks consecutively protest as OIC delegation moves in Myanmar.
Sittwe &Yangon | Agencies | November 16, 2013:: Myanmar Buddhist monks led rallies against the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation yesterday as delegates from the Muslim body toured western Rakhine state, where religious violence has torn communities asunder.
The delegation from the world’s top Islamic body is in the country to discuss the response to several bouts of anti-Muslim violence that have left some 250 people dead and tens of thousands homeless.But the group is treated with deep suspicion by Buddhists in Rakhine, where communities are now almost completely segregated on religious grounds after last year’s unrest, with Muslims making up the vast majority of the 140,000 people displaced.
“No OIC in Rakhine land, respect our sovereignty,” one protesting monk told AFP as hundreds of demonstrators converged on the airport in the state capital Sittwe early Friday.
The delegation met local officials inside the airport yesterday before visiting remote areas by helicopter, an official told AFP.
Myanmar remains tense after eruptions of religious unrest across the country that have cast a shadow over much-lauded reforms and caused concerns among the international community.
The OIC group, which includes the organisation’s chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, met the Myanmar vice president in the capital Naypyidaw on Thursday, accompanied by the ambassadors from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bangladesh and Malaysia.
They discussed the “peace and stability of Rakhine State and rehabilitation” in the region, according to the state-run New Light of Myanmar.
In Yangon on Friday rallies against the OIC were led by hundreds of maroon-clad Buddhist monks, a sight formerly associated with brutally-suppressed peaceful rallies for democracy in 2007 known as the Saffron Revolution.
Earlier, around 300 Buddhist monks marched through Yangon Tuesday on 12.11.2103 in protest at a looming visit by delegates from the world’s top Islamic body to Myanmar, which has been rattled by several bouts of anti-Muslim violence.“The OIC is discriminating in giving assistance here. We believe they help only Muslims,” said Rakhawuntha, a protesting monk.
A delegation from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will meet with Muslims and
Buddhists during their stay later this week, according to a senior official.
Attacks against Muslims in Buddhist-majority Myanmar have overshadowed widely praised political reforms overseen by the former general since military rule ended in 2011.
A total of around 500 protesters, some wielding banners in reading “No OIC” and “OIC get out”, marched through the commercial capital Tuesday, accusing the Islamic bloc of wanting to internationalise the issue of religious violence.
One monk, called Pamaukkha, said the OIC was not welcome because they will deliver a biased assessment of Myanmar’s troubles.
“They will say as majority of Buddhists are abusing a minority group of Muslims,” he added.
“Then they will report on our internal affairs to the UK and the UN.”
Eye-witnesses to violence which flared in March in central Myanmar said people dressed in monks’ robes were involved in the unrest.
Radical monks have also led a campaign to shun shops owned by Muslims.
The OIC delegation will “meet with people working… in Rakhine State and groups working for religious harmony — from both communities,” president’s office spokesman Ye Htut said in a post on his Facebook page.
Courtesy: Myanmar Times | The Malaysian Insider | AP.
Qatar migrant workers 'treated like animals' - Amnesty
Many of the migrant workers in Qatar come from South Asia, Amnesty says
Amnesty says migrant workers are often subjected to non-payment of wages, dangerous working conditions and squalid accommodation.
The rights group said one manager had referred to workers as "animals".
Qatari officials have said conditions will be suitable for those involved in construction of World Cup facilities.
It has not yet commented on the latest report.
Amnesty said it conducted interviews with 210 workers, employers and government officials for its report, The Dark Side of Migration: Spotlight on Qatar's construction sector ahead of the World Cup.
The report includes testimony from Nepalese workers employed by a company delivering supplies to a construction project associated with the planned Fifa headquarters.
The workers said they were "treated like cattle", working up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, including during Qatar's hot summer months.
Disabilities
Amnesty said some of the abuses amounted to "forced labour".
Some migrant workers were threatened with penalty fines, deportation or loss of income if they did not show up to work even though they were not being paid, Amnesty said.
More than 1,000 people were admitted to the trauma unit at Doha's main hospital in 2012 having fallen from height at work, Amnesty said, citing an unnamed hospital representative.
Some 10% were disabled as a result and the mortality rate was "significant", AI said.
"It is simply inexcusable in one of the richest countries in the world, that so many migrant workers are being ruthlessly exploited, deprived of their pay and left struggling to survive," said Salil Shetty, Amnesty's secretary general.
"Our findings indicate an alarming level of exploitation.
"Fifa has a duty to send a strong public message that it will not tolerate human rights abuses on construction projects related to the World Cup."
It follows a report by the UK's Guardian newspaper in September, which likened workers' conditions to "modern-day slavery".
The Guardian investigation drew a strong response from the world professional footballers' association Fifpro, which collaborates with the Uni Global Union, the voice of 20 million service sector workers.
Qatar must protect the rights of the workers who are to deliver the 2022 World Cup, it said.
FifPro board member Brendan Schwab said it was "inexcusable for workers' lives to be sacrificed, especially given modern health and safety practices in the construction industry".
Palestinian Arabs Setting Animal Traps to 'Catch' Jews
 |
| Palestinian terrorists |
(Shekhem) are setting animal traps in their fields to "catch" Jewish activists committing acts of vandalism.
Palestinian Arab media sources allege that this has become a popular tactic in "dealing" with neighboring Jewish farmers. The move may be a response to so-called "price tag" attacks against the Palestinian Authority in response to the rising incidents of anti-Semitism and terrorism against Israelis.
But there are concerns such tactics could be used as a pretext to harm innocent Israeli civilians and farmers in the region.
Many allegations against Jewish residents in Judea and Samaria of vandalism - especially regarding Arab-owned olive groves - have been categorically disproven over the past few years, with a photography campaign proving in 2012 that Arabs and Leftist groups have staged attacks for the cameras on numerous occasions.
Observers note that Arab and left-wing activists often prey on the ignorance of Western journalists, who are unaware that the method for harvesting olives in the region involves hacking off the trees' branches.
"Last year, we caught Arabs and left wing activists red handed as they cut down olive trees,” said Samaria (Shomron) Residents' Council Director Sagi Keisler. “In the last few years, the olive harvest season has become the season of incitement.”
"A machine of false propaganda developed around the olive harvest in Samaria,” he explained. “Radical leftist groups flooded the media with false reports that Jews were damaging olive trees and hurting Arabs.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/174105#.Uop3RuI4lXk
State rulers have no right to dictate religion to non-Muslims, says constitutional expert
(TMI) State rulers in Malaysia have no power to suspend or deny the rights of non-Muslims to refer to God as Allah or their rights to religious freedom, which are guaranteed under the Federal Constitution, says constitutional law expert Dr Abdul Aziz Bari.
He said the laws are clear about the authority of the state rulers, just days after Selangor's Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah reminded non-Muslims in the state not to refer to God as Allah, which was affirmed a month ago by an appeal court ruling.
"The powers of all the rulers must be seen within the context of the Federal Constitution. The authority of the rulers as heads of religion only applies to Muslims within their respective states," Abdul Aziz told The Malaysian Insider.
"But the non-Muslims, even those who are residing in those states, are outside the jurisdiction of these rulers. Even with regard to Muslims, orders issued by the rulers are not absolute as they are subject to Islamic laws," he added.
For example, the former academic said the rulers cannot ask Muslims in their states to do something which goes against the Islamic religion.
Although the Federal Constitution has made clear the councils and clerics were under the authority of the rulers, there was nothing which empowered the rulers to issue their own laws.
Abdul Aziz said when the Federal Constitution was drawn up, it was envisaged that the rulers would be allowed to retain their religious authority free of government interference.
But the Federal Constitution certainly never imagined that the rulers might go against the tenets of Islam, he added.
"Islamic law is not entirely clear on the issue of Allah. Religious authorities in the Middle East, which has long been the cradle of Islam, have expressed their views that prohibition on the usage of
Allah by non-Muslims has no basis in Islam," Abdul Aziz said.
He said although the Court of Appeal ruled on October 14 to uphold the ban by the Home Ministry on the use of the word Allah by Catholic publication Herald, perhaps it was better for the highest court in Malaysia to make an ultimate decision.
"While the rulers are free from the advice of the government of the day in exercising their powers as the heads of Islam in their respective states, but they are still bound and subject to the provisions of the Federal Constitution," Abdul Aziz said.
"With regards to the various councils, they have no legislative authority to make laws. Even when it comes to Muslims, what eventually binds them is the legal provisions, not the decision of the councils," he said, adding that Islamic religious councils only had the authority to assist and advise the rulers.
Selangor is Malaysia's richest state and counts many Christians from Sabah and Sarawak as its residents. Most of them worship in Bahasa Malaysia and refer to God as Allah.
Putrajaya has said that it would stick to a 10-point agreement that would allow the usage of the word in East Malaysia but not in Peninsular Malaysia where the majority are Muslims.
Restrictions on other religions using certain Arabic words was first introduced in 1982 just after Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad took power but they were never strictly enforced until the past few years, much to the chagrin of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations who use Bahasa Malaysia to preach to a generation of Malaysians who use the language more than English
Registration Department staff from Putrajaya nabbed in police bust on IC syndicate in Miri
A National Registration Department (NRD) assistant officer was among dozens arrested by police in Miri as authorities smashed the state's biggest syndicate behind the falsifying of MyKads and birth certificates.
The 57-year-old officer, attached to the NRD office in Putrajaya, is one of the key players in the syndicate, said Sarawak police commissioner Datuk Wira Mohammad Sabtu Osman.
Mohammad said there could be more arrests as police investigation widens.
“We will be hunting members of the syndicate that have escaped arrests,” Mohammad told a press conference today.
Mohammad said police made the arrests on November 16 after a week of surveillance at a residential estate in Desa Pujut in the Kuala Baram district.
He said police found 34 people in the house at a residential estate in Desa Pujut in Kuala Baram – about 12km from Miri town – but detained 23 of them and seized two fake MyKads, 30 copies of "birth certificates", 69 copies of photostated certificates, an "official receipt" and three Sabah "birth certificates".
Police also seized RM3,100 in cash, four USB thumb-drives, three stamp-pads, 10 rubber stamps of various government departments in Sabah, a laptop and a desktop computer.
Of those arrested, most were from Sarawak, while the rest comprised two Bajaus from Sabah; six from Peninsular Malaysia, including the NRD officer; and seven men and three women from the Philippines.
The two Bajaus were arrested for being in possession of fake MyKads while the 10 Filipinos were held to verify the NRD-issued travel documents they held in their possession.
Mohammad said the NRD officer was on leave and he was allegedly overseeing the operation when he was busted.
"The arrest of the Sabahans and foreigners showed that the syndicate had spread its wing to Miri from Sabah."
Mohammad also said police are now trying to find if there is a link between the break-in of the NRD office in Bakong, about 50km from Miri, last week and the busted syndicate.
In the break-in, Mohammad said 35 MyKads awaiting collection and other documents were stolen. - November 18, 2013.
The 57-year-old officer, attached to the NRD office in Putrajaya, is one of the key players in the syndicate, said Sarawak police commissioner Datuk Wira Mohammad Sabtu Osman.
Mohammad said there could be more arrests as police investigation widens.
“We will be hunting members of the syndicate that have escaped arrests,” Mohammad told a press conference today.
Mohammad said police made the arrests on November 16 after a week of surveillance at a residential estate in Desa Pujut in the Kuala Baram district.
He said police found 34 people in the house at a residential estate in Desa Pujut in Kuala Baram – about 12km from Miri town – but detained 23 of them and seized two fake MyKads, 30 copies of "birth certificates", 69 copies of photostated certificates, an "official receipt" and three Sabah "birth certificates".
Police also seized RM3,100 in cash, four USB thumb-drives, three stamp-pads, 10 rubber stamps of various government departments in Sabah, a laptop and a desktop computer.
Of those arrested, most were from Sarawak, while the rest comprised two Bajaus from Sabah; six from Peninsular Malaysia, including the NRD officer; and seven men and three women from the Philippines.
The two Bajaus were arrested for being in possession of fake MyKads while the 10 Filipinos were held to verify the NRD-issued travel documents they held in their possession.
Mohammad said the NRD officer was on leave and he was allegedly overseeing the operation when he was busted.
"The arrest of the Sabahans and foreigners showed that the syndicate had spread its wing to Miri from Sabah."
Mohammad also said police are now trying to find if there is a link between the break-in of the NRD office in Bakong, about 50km from Miri, last week and the busted syndicate.
In the break-in, Mohammad said 35 MyKads awaiting collection and other documents were stolen. - November 18, 2013.
Loke: Why no action against Negeri MB?
AG Chambers is practising selective prosecution by charging a tycoon for illegal money transfers but letting off NS MB Mohamad Hassan on a similar case.
KUALA LUMPUR: Seremban MP Anthony Loke took the Attorney-General’s Chambers to task (AGC) today for not acting against Negeri Sembilan Menteri Besar Mohamad Hassan’s alleged money-laundering activities.
“Has the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) recommended that the AG’s Chambers prosecute Mohamad? Why has the AGC not acted against him?” Loke asked during the debate on development expenditure this afternoon.
Four years ago, the menteri besar is alleged to have transferred RM10 million to a foreign country through Salamath Ali Money Changer Sdn Bhd.
Loke said he believed that the money was derived from corruption.
“On Sept 25, I received an answer from the AGC that the money was not from corruption but recommended that the money-changer be charged,” said Loke.
He also questioned whether the AGC was practising selective persecution because it was ready to prosecute a businessman with a Tan Sri title for a similar offence.
The tycoon paid close to RM200 million in fines for illegal overseas funds transfer made through money-changers.
The tycoon was nabbed by the authorities in an operation by Bank Negara in 2009.
However, no action has been taken against the menteri besar.
KUALA LUMPUR: Seremban MP Anthony Loke took the Attorney-General’s Chambers to task (AGC) today for not acting against Negeri Sembilan Menteri Besar Mohamad Hassan’s alleged money-laundering activities.“Has the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) recommended that the AG’s Chambers prosecute Mohamad? Why has the AGC not acted against him?” Loke asked during the debate on development expenditure this afternoon.
Four years ago, the menteri besar is alleged to have transferred RM10 million to a foreign country through Salamath Ali Money Changer Sdn Bhd.
Loke said he believed that the money was derived from corruption.
“On Sept 25, I received an answer from the AGC that the money was not from corruption but recommended that the money-changer be charged,” said Loke.
He also questioned whether the AGC was practising selective persecution because it was ready to prosecute a businessman with a Tan Sri title for a similar offence.
The tycoon paid close to RM200 million in fines for illegal overseas funds transfer made through money-changers.
The tycoon was nabbed by the authorities in an operation by Bank Negara in 2009.
However, no action has been taken against the menteri besar.
Temple demolition: Why only in BN states?
Penang Deputy Chief Minister P Ramasamy says temple demolitions stab at the heart and identity of Hindus in the country.
KUALA LUMPUR: Penang Deputy Chief Minister P Ramasamy has labelled the Umno-led federal government as extremist and insensitive to Hindus following the recent demolition of a Hindu temple here.
Speaking to reporters after visiting the Sri Muneswarar Kaliyamman temple at Jalan P Ramlee, in the heart of city’s golden triangle, Ramasamy said: “I am utterly disappointed and sad looking at the condition of the temple.
“How can FT Minister Tengku Adnan Mansor say that he’s beautifying the temple when it looks in a despair state.”
He also questioned Work Minister Fadhillah Yusof’s silence and inaction to re-building the demolished temple.
The DAP leader also slammed the government for not respecting the freedom of religion as enshrined in the Federal Constitution.
He further hit out at MIC president G Palanivel for denying the demolition of the temple and not for championing Indian issues.
He accused MIC of bowing to their Umno master’s’ policies and directives.
During the demolition of the temple, Ramasamy said he was in a conference in Mauritius and had cited the issue to the audience.
He also pointed out that since Pakatan Rakyat took over Penang in 2008, the state never experienced such temple demolition issues.
“Why do the temple issues arise at states governed by the Barisan Nasional government?,” asked Ramasamy.
Ramasamy reiterated that they will defend this temple issue until a solution is found and will highlight this matter in the next DAP CEC meeting.
Promises not kept
Ramasamy also trained his gun at Deputy FT Minister J Loga Bala Mohan for not keeping the promises made during the initial discussion about the temple.
On Nov 9, around 300 DBKL enforcement officers and police demolished the temple without a proper notice, creating a furore among the Indians in the country.
The temple was issued an eviction notice on June 13, ordering it to vacate the premises before June 26, in order to make way for development.
However, political leaders from both BN and Pakatan along with temple devotees staged several protests to stop the demolition.
The notice was put on hold after the matter was brought to the prime minister’s attention who had ordered the demolition to be stayed until a proper solution was found.
KUALA LUMPUR: Penang Deputy Chief Minister P Ramasamy has labelled the Umno-led federal government as extremist and insensitive to Hindus following the recent demolition of a Hindu temple here.Speaking to reporters after visiting the Sri Muneswarar Kaliyamman temple at Jalan P Ramlee, in the heart of city’s golden triangle, Ramasamy said: “I am utterly disappointed and sad looking at the condition of the temple.
“How can FT Minister Tengku Adnan Mansor say that he’s beautifying the temple when it looks in a despair state.”
He also questioned Work Minister Fadhillah Yusof’s silence and inaction to re-building the demolished temple.
The DAP leader also slammed the government for not respecting the freedom of religion as enshrined in the Federal Constitution.
He further hit out at MIC president G Palanivel for denying the demolition of the temple and not for championing Indian issues.
He accused MIC of bowing to their Umno master’s’ policies and directives.
During the demolition of the temple, Ramasamy said he was in a conference in Mauritius and had cited the issue to the audience.
He also pointed out that since Pakatan Rakyat took over Penang in 2008, the state never experienced such temple demolition issues.
“Why do the temple issues arise at states governed by the Barisan Nasional government?,” asked Ramasamy.
Ramasamy reiterated that they will defend this temple issue until a solution is found and will highlight this matter in the next DAP CEC meeting.
Promises not kept
Ramasamy also trained his gun at Deputy FT Minister J Loga Bala Mohan for not keeping the promises made during the initial discussion about the temple.
On Nov 9, around 300 DBKL enforcement officers and police demolished the temple without a proper notice, creating a furore among the Indians in the country.
The temple was issued an eviction notice on June 13, ordering it to vacate the premises before June 26, in order to make way for development.
However, political leaders from both BN and Pakatan along with temple devotees staged several protests to stop the demolition.
The notice was put on hold after the matter was brought to the prime minister’s attention who had ordered the demolition to be stayed until a proper solution was found.
Mahathir admitted to IJN
The former prime minister was suffering from chest infection
KUALA LUMPUR: Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was today admitted to the General Ward of the National Heart Institute, here.
A statement from Dr Mahathir’s office today said the former prime minister was diagnosed to have chest infection and was currently undergoing treatment and chest physiotherapy.
“The medical team is closely monitoring his condition and is satisfied with his progress,” it said.
Dr Mahathir is expected to remain in the hospital for the next few days to allow the medical team to monitor his progress further as well as for physiotherapy and exercise.
Doctors have advised that visits be confined to Dr Mahathir’s immediate family members.
- Bernama
KUALA LUMPUR: Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was today admitted to the General Ward of the National Heart Institute, here.A statement from Dr Mahathir’s office today said the former prime minister was diagnosed to have chest infection and was currently undergoing treatment and chest physiotherapy.
“The medical team is closely monitoring his condition and is satisfied with his progress,” it said.
Dr Mahathir is expected to remain in the hospital for the next few days to allow the medical team to monitor his progress further as well as for physiotherapy and exercise.
Doctors have advised that visits be confined to Dr Mahathir’s immediate family members.
- Bernama
Palani in Poland as veep race heats up
The MIC president does not want to be seen as taking sides, says a source from his camp.
PETALING JAYA: MIC president G Palanivel will not be in the country for the next one week, attending an international climate change conference in Poland, giving him the opportunity to avoid being seen as taking sides in the party’s vice presidential race.
“He does not want any speculation that he is endorsing anyone for the veep race,” a source from Palanivel’s camp told FMT. He is only due back on Nov 24.
Eight candidates, including incumbents M Saravanan and SK Devamany, are vying for the three vice presidential seats. The others are former youth chiefs T Mohan and SA Vigneswaran, party treasurer-general Jaspal Singh, former vice president S Sothinathan, Johor Baharu division leader S Balakrishnan and Bukit Bintang division leader James Selvarajah.
A Tamil daily reported today that Palanivel had allegedly endorsed Vigneswaran, Jaspal, Balakrishnan and Sothinathan.
FMT’s source laughed off the report, saying that it did not make sense for the president to endorse four candidates for three seats.
The party’s deputy president, Dr S Subramaniam, said he knew nothing about Palanivel endorsing anyone.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “The president has said that he is not endorsing anyone. Personally, I feel the race should be free and fair without any interference.
“So far, there is no official stance taken by the president. As you can see, there is no official announcement on this.”
However, a source from the party’s Central Working Committee (CWC) claimed that Palanivel had named the four as his preferred candidates in text messages to those close to him.
Peace plan
Palanivel retained the party presidency uncontested some three months ago under a peace plan brokered by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. The deal was reached after Palanivel, Subramaniam, Saravanan and Devamany—met Najib at the Prime Minister’s residence.
The plan stipulates a no-contest for the party’s top two positions.
Subramaniam won the deputy president’s post uncontested as nominations for the deputy presidency, vice presidencies and 23 CWC positions closed last weekend.
A total of 88 candidates are fighting for the CWC seats.
Sources told FMT that there are more to the peace plan than already reported.
“Part of the peace plan is that Palanivel and Subramaniam will not put up their preferred candidates lists for vice presidential and CWC positions,” said a source.
If Palanivel has indeed endorsed the four candidates, it would run foul of Najib’s peace plan and anger Saravanan and Devamany.
“If it is true, then definitely Saravanan and Devamany will ask Palanivel to reveal details of the peace plan,” the source said. “They will also go to the ground and could stir some trouble for the president.”
“Saravanan is just waiting to see how this develops. If Palanivel endorses anyone, then he is expected to come out with guns blazing and this will not be good for Palanivel or the party due to the support he has in the party now.”
Devamany is no pushover either. The Perak state assembly speaker is also a firebrand and if he teams up with Saravanan in bashing Palanivel, the party would definitely go through a rough patch.
According to the source, it is for this reason that Palanivel is unlikely to endorse anyone openly.
Prior to the nomination, Palanivel on numerous occasions openly said he would not endorse any candidate.
“But some of the candidates are going out showing SMSes, allegedly from the president, endorsing them,” the source said.
“This endorsement thing was started by the candidates and their cronies and not by the president.
“How can Palanivel defend something which is not true? He can only deny. He cannot do much if someone says he or she is endorsed by the president. It is better for Palanivel to deny this once and for all before polling on Nov 30.”
PETALING JAYA: MIC president G Palanivel will not be in the country for the next one week, attending an international climate change conference in Poland, giving him the opportunity to avoid being seen as taking sides in the party’s vice presidential race.“He does not want any speculation that he is endorsing anyone for the veep race,” a source from Palanivel’s camp told FMT. He is only due back on Nov 24.
Eight candidates, including incumbents M Saravanan and SK Devamany, are vying for the three vice presidential seats. The others are former youth chiefs T Mohan and SA Vigneswaran, party treasurer-general Jaspal Singh, former vice president S Sothinathan, Johor Baharu division leader S Balakrishnan and Bukit Bintang division leader James Selvarajah.
A Tamil daily reported today that Palanivel had allegedly endorsed Vigneswaran, Jaspal, Balakrishnan and Sothinathan.
FMT’s source laughed off the report, saying that it did not make sense for the president to endorse four candidates for three seats.
The party’s deputy president, Dr S Subramaniam, said he knew nothing about Palanivel endorsing anyone.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “The president has said that he is not endorsing anyone. Personally, I feel the race should be free and fair without any interference.
“So far, there is no official stance taken by the president. As you can see, there is no official announcement on this.”
However, a source from the party’s Central Working Committee (CWC) claimed that Palanivel had named the four as his preferred candidates in text messages to those close to him.
Peace plan
Palanivel retained the party presidency uncontested some three months ago under a peace plan brokered by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. The deal was reached after Palanivel, Subramaniam, Saravanan and Devamany—met Najib at the Prime Minister’s residence.
The plan stipulates a no-contest for the party’s top two positions.
Subramaniam won the deputy president’s post uncontested as nominations for the deputy presidency, vice presidencies and 23 CWC positions closed last weekend.
A total of 88 candidates are fighting for the CWC seats.
Sources told FMT that there are more to the peace plan than already reported.
“Part of the peace plan is that Palanivel and Subramaniam will not put up their preferred candidates lists for vice presidential and CWC positions,” said a source.
If Palanivel has indeed endorsed the four candidates, it would run foul of Najib’s peace plan and anger Saravanan and Devamany.
“If it is true, then definitely Saravanan and Devamany will ask Palanivel to reveal details of the peace plan,” the source said. “They will also go to the ground and could stir some trouble for the president.”
“Saravanan is just waiting to see how this develops. If Palanivel endorses anyone, then he is expected to come out with guns blazing and this will not be good for Palanivel or the party due to the support he has in the party now.”
Devamany is no pushover either. The Perak state assembly speaker is also a firebrand and if he teams up with Saravanan in bashing Palanivel, the party would definitely go through a rough patch.
According to the source, it is for this reason that Palanivel is unlikely to endorse anyone openly.
Prior to the nomination, Palanivel on numerous occasions openly said he would not endorse any candidate.
“But some of the candidates are going out showing SMSes, allegedly from the president, endorsing them,” the source said.
“This endorsement thing was started by the candidates and their cronies and not by the president.
“How can Palanivel defend something which is not true? He can only deny. He cannot do much if someone says he or she is endorsed by the president. It is better for Palanivel to deny this once and for all before polling on Nov 30.”
NEP to stay because…
Senator Abdul Wahid Omar claims that top management positions in Malaysia are still Chinese dominated and the government will not compromise NEP objectives.
KUALA LUMPUR: Minister in Prime Minister’s Department, Senator Abdul Wahid Omar denied that the New Economic Policy (NEP) was a factor contributing to many Malaysians leaving the country.
His denial came in reply to Selayang MP William Leong Jee Kern who questioned whether the NEP would be amended in light of the World Bank report stating that the NEP was among factors listed for Malaysians leaving the country.
“You shouldn’t just look at a single point stated in the report. The World Bank report is much more comprehensive.
“It cites lack of career development and pay scale differences as reasons too,” said Wahid.
The NEP, implemented in 1970, continued its two pronged objective of poverty eradication and to end the domination of certain races in certain sectors of the economy, until 1999.
Wahid added that the government would not want to compromise on the NEP’s objective, specifically the objective encompassing the dominance of a single race in certain business sectors.
“We want to increase the bumiputera economic level without taking away the rights of the other communities.”
He added that currently the bumiputera community only hold 20% of top management positions of business corporations in the country.
“There are 70% Chinese in the top management brass and 5–10% from the Indian community,” he added to reiterate the reason why implementation of the NEP had to be retained.
KUALA LUMPUR: Minister in Prime Minister’s Department, Senator Abdul Wahid Omar denied that the New Economic Policy (NEP) was a factor contributing to many Malaysians leaving the country.His denial came in reply to Selayang MP William Leong Jee Kern who questioned whether the NEP would be amended in light of the World Bank report stating that the NEP was among factors listed for Malaysians leaving the country.
“You shouldn’t just look at a single point stated in the report. The World Bank report is much more comprehensive.
“It cites lack of career development and pay scale differences as reasons too,” said Wahid.
The NEP, implemented in 1970, continued its two pronged objective of poverty eradication and to end the domination of certain races in certain sectors of the economy, until 1999.
Wahid added that the government would not want to compromise on the NEP’s objective, specifically the objective encompassing the dominance of a single race in certain business sectors.
“We want to increase the bumiputera economic level without taking away the rights of the other communities.”
He added that currently the bumiputera community only hold 20% of top management positions of business corporations in the country.
“There are 70% Chinese in the top management brass and 5–10% from the Indian community,” he added to reiterate the reason why implementation of the NEP had to be retained.
They spawned the 1 percent: How Washington and Lincoln explain inequality today
Salon
George Washington, our first president, and Abraham Lincoln, our 16th, are the twin icons of that office. Their portraits are side by side in our wallets, in our change purses and on classroom walls during Presidents’ Day observances. Yet they represent different visions of an American economic order, differences that persist to this day. Washington stood for a system in which one man enriches himself by skimming off the excess value of his underlings’ work. Lincoln stood for the principle that every worker is entitled to the full value of his own labor. Call it the battle between Washingtonomics and Lincolnomics. From the founding of this country up until the Civil War, Washington’s order was dominant. It’s been dominant in our era, too, ever since Washington’s native South regained control of the federal government in the 1970s.
If you want to understand why the United States has never achieved the same level of economic equality as other industrialized nations, you have to look back at Washington’s life and career. And then you have to look back even further, to Washington’s ancestors, who settled Virginia. You’ll find that inequality was one of this nation’s founding principles.
In his socio-historical study “Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America,” David Hackett Fischer argued that American slavery did not result in a stratified society, but was established in order to create one. The early Virginia settlers were the second and third sons of aristocratic families in the south and west of England, and they intended to enjoy in the New World the lifestyle that primogeniture had denied them on their fathers’ manors in the Old. At first, they tried to enslave the Natives. When that failed, they imported Africans.
“Virginia’s ruling elite … required an underclass that would remain firmly fixed in its condition of subordination,” Fischer wrote. “The culture of the English countryside could not be reproduced in the New World without this rural proletariat.”
From its origins in America’s first colony, this aristocratic system spread throughout the entire South. Its success could be found “in the small and very powerful class of landed gentry, in the large majority of landless tenants and laborers, in the minority status of its middle class, in the general level of wealth inequality (Gini ratios of .60 to .75), in the magnitude of poverty and in the degradation of the poor.”
As a result of the Virginians’ social engineering, the United States became a colonial nation in which a European elite has traditionally dominated a combination of indigenous people and descendants of Africans imported to work as slaves. We’re a first-world country and a third-world country, coexisting within the same borders.
In Denmark — the quintessential European social democracy, whose 5 million ethnically homogenous citizens consider themselves members of a single tribe — the Gini ratio is 24. (TheGini ratio is a measurement of a nation’s wealth distribution, with 0 being perfect equality and 100 being all the money in one man’s hands.) The U.S.’s Gini ratio is 45, putting us in the same league as Mexico (48.3), Venezuela (44.8), and Jamaica (45.5) — other colonial nations where white settlers and planters have lorded it over a darker-skinned workforce.
No one benefited from the top-heavy economic structure of colonial Virginia more than George Washington. Washington was a country squire who rode to hounds, danced at cotillions and ordered china and fashionable breeches from London. By the end of his life, he was master of 277 slaves, on whose backs he built the fortune that enabled him to serve as commander in chief of the Continental Army, and then president. Washington was one of the wealthiest men in the United States, and is still the wealthiest man ever to hold the presidency.
Washington envisioned an end to slavery, and an industrial future for America, but a man with his feudal, agrarian outlook would never have prospered in such a nation.
Abraham Lincoln’s entire life was shaped by disagreements with the Southern planter class, to which Washington and most of our early presidents belonged. When Lincoln was 7 years old, his family moved from Kentucky to Indiana to escape the fate of the small farmer squeezed between planter and slave. Lincoln’s father eventually settled on a 120-acre farm near Charleston, Ill., where he raised corn and chickens. Despite his popular image as the Railsplitter, Lincoln hated the rustic life, and moved to Springfield, where he became a respectable, but not wealthy, lawyer. His wo-story house on Eighth Street would not look out of place in a modern suburb.
In Lincoln’s home territory of Central Illinois, many voters hated slavery and African-Americans for the same reason: because both plantation owners and free African-Americans undercut the price of white labor. Lincoln belonged to a middle class of independent professionals and tradesmen that was growing in the North, but was incompatible with the plantation society in the South, and he knew how to appeal to its anxieties.
During his campaigns for the Senate and the presidency, Lincoln argued that African-Americans deserved economic, but not social, equality. In his debates with Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln declared that he did not believe African-Americans should be allowed to vote, or serve on juries, or hold office, or marry whites. He did believe that African-Americans had as much right to the fruits of their own labor as whites, that slavery was “a form of theft,” and that a society divided into permanent classes of masters and servants was doomed to medieval stagnation, because workers would have no motivation to better themselves. At the bottom of Lincoln’s moralizing was this message to white voters: If the black man can be made to work for nothing, so can you.
In an 1859 speech to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Lincoln went beyond condemning masters’ exploitation of their slaves, and criticized the very concept of purchasing another’s labor. To Lincoln, the idea that one man should be in the permanent employ of another — even for wages — was at the root of the justification for slavery. He said:
Born in what is now Detroit during the Civil War, Ford understood the value of an economically empowered workforce. He turned traditional economic assumptions upside down by treating laborers not as commodities, but potential customers. Before Ford, planters and industrialists had profited by paying the lowest possible wages and charging the highest possible prices. Ford doubled his employees’ wages, to $5 a day, and used assembly-line efficiencies to produce cars they could afford to buy. His philosophy, which came to be known as Fordism, was fundamental to the development of the modern middle class. And although Ford resisted labor unions, once the United Auto Workers was forced on him by two Lincolnian politicians — President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Michigan Gov. Murray Van Wagoner — he granted it the most generous contract of any automaker, even allowing dues check-offs and the closed shop.
Sam Walton built his business on a plantation model with which Washington would have been familiar. The merchant opened his first Wal-Marts in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, paying wages that were low even for a region accustomed to extremes of wealth. He started his cashiers at 50 cents an hour — half the minimum wage — on the grounds that the law applied only to businesses with 50 employees or more, and each of his stores was more lightly staffed than that. Wal-Mart cashiers got raises only when the Labor Department stepped in. Like Washington’s tobacco plantation, Walton’s stores were labor-intensive operations that could only turn a profit if workers were bargained down to the lowest possible nickel. Walton’s product was low prices, which were possible only if his workers earned low wages. Undistracted by war or politics, Walton did Washington better, becoming the wealthiest man in America, with a fortune of $20 billion — the surplus he skimmed off the labor of 1.1 million employees. Wal-Mart also became the largest employer in the U.S., displacing General Motors, which practiced Fordism on an even larger scale than Ford.
“It is doubtful Wal-Mart would have met similar success in an earlier period of American economic history, or in a different social and political environment,” wrote Jeff Madrick in “Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present.” “Labor laws were increasingly poorly enforced in this era, starting with the Reagan administration. The number of government labor inspectors was not increased even as the nation’s workforce grew vastly in number … Across the nation, a rapidly growing number of workers were illegally fired when they tried to organize fellow workers into unions. Congress also deliberately kept the minimum wage down, raising it rarely, so it fell compared to inflation.”
Actually, the economic deregulation that would help make Sam Walton a multibillionaire began one president earlier, under Jimmy Carter. Carter, the son of a moderately prosperous peanut farmer whose land was worked by sharecroppers, was the first Southerner to win the presidency in his own right since Zachary Taylor. His election began a three-decade period during which every president either hailed from a Southern state or, in Ronald Reagan’s case, was elected with strong Southern support. George Washington’s region had returned to power, and that return brought political support for the stratified society that has existed in the South since the Father of Our Country’s day. As Michael Lind wrote here on Salon, “for generations Southern economic policymakers have sought to secure a lucrative second-tier role for the South in the national and world economies, as a supplier of commodities like cotton and oil and gas and a source of cheap labor for footloose corporations. This strategy of specializing in commodities and cheap labor is intended to enrich the Southern oligarchy. It doesn’t enrich the majority of Southerners, white, black or brown, but it is not intended to. Contrary to what is often said, the ‘original sin’ of the South is not slavery, or even racism. It is cheap, powerless labor.”
For a long time, that was a regional economic strategy, but once the South recaptured the federal government, it attempted to spread that ethos throughout the entire nation — with great success, as evidenced by today’s weak labor laws and lagging minimum wages. Wal-Mart could not have broken out of its cradle in Dixie and become the nation’s dominant retailer without those policies. Even Indiana and Michigan, once-reliable redoubts of free labor, recently became right-to-work states, putting themselves on the same page as every member of the old Confederacy.
The core principle of Lincoln’s political career (as opposed to his presidency) was preventing the spread of slavery into the territories and the Northern states, where it would undermine free labor. If we accept Lind’s argument about low-wage economic policies, we should be as determined as Lincoln to confine them to their native region. Or better yet, stamp them out altogether, as we did slavery. Because they are threatening the existence of a middle class.
The time may be right, too. Barack Obama is the first president elected from a Northern, industrial state since John F. Kennedy. From Lincoln’s own Illinois, in fact. Much has been made of that fact that Obama fulfilled the advances in racial equality that Lincoln began. But Lincoln didn’t free the slaves with the idea that one of them would become president. He gave them their freedom to prevent their unpaid labor from undercutting the middle class. That’s another aspect of Lincoln’s legacy Obama can fulfill.
George Washington, our first president, and Abraham Lincoln, our 16th, are the twin icons of that office. Their portraits are side by side in our wallets, in our change purses and on classroom walls during Presidents’ Day observances. Yet they represent different visions of an American economic order, differences that persist to this day. Washington stood for a system in which one man enriches himself by skimming off the excess value of his underlings’ work. Lincoln stood for the principle that every worker is entitled to the full value of his own labor. Call it the battle between Washingtonomics and Lincolnomics. From the founding of this country up until the Civil War, Washington’s order was dominant. It’s been dominant in our era, too, ever since Washington’s native South regained control of the federal government in the 1970s.
If you want to understand why the United States has never achieved the same level of economic equality as other industrialized nations, you have to look back at Washington’s life and career. And then you have to look back even further, to Washington’s ancestors, who settled Virginia. You’ll find that inequality was one of this nation’s founding principles.
In his socio-historical study “Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America,” David Hackett Fischer argued that American slavery did not result in a stratified society, but was established in order to create one. The early Virginia settlers were the second and third sons of aristocratic families in the south and west of England, and they intended to enjoy in the New World the lifestyle that primogeniture had denied them on their fathers’ manors in the Old. At first, they tried to enslave the Natives. When that failed, they imported Africans.
“Virginia’s ruling elite … required an underclass that would remain firmly fixed in its condition of subordination,” Fischer wrote. “The culture of the English countryside could not be reproduced in the New World without this rural proletariat.”
From its origins in America’s first colony, this aristocratic system spread throughout the entire South. Its success could be found “in the small and very powerful class of landed gentry, in the large majority of landless tenants and laborers, in the minority status of its middle class, in the general level of wealth inequality (Gini ratios of .60 to .75), in the magnitude of poverty and in the degradation of the poor.”
As a result of the Virginians’ social engineering, the United States became a colonial nation in which a European elite has traditionally dominated a combination of indigenous people and descendants of Africans imported to work as slaves. We’re a first-world country and a third-world country, coexisting within the same borders.
In Denmark — the quintessential European social democracy, whose 5 million ethnically homogenous citizens consider themselves members of a single tribe — the Gini ratio is 24. (TheGini ratio is a measurement of a nation’s wealth distribution, with 0 being perfect equality and 100 being all the money in one man’s hands.) The U.S.’s Gini ratio is 45, putting us in the same league as Mexico (48.3), Venezuela (44.8), and Jamaica (45.5) — other colonial nations where white settlers and planters have lorded it over a darker-skinned workforce.
No one benefited from the top-heavy economic structure of colonial Virginia more than George Washington. Washington was a country squire who rode to hounds, danced at cotillions and ordered china and fashionable breeches from London. By the end of his life, he was master of 277 slaves, on whose backs he built the fortune that enabled him to serve as commander in chief of the Continental Army, and then president. Washington was one of the wealthiest men in the United States, and is still the wealthiest man ever to hold the presidency.
Washington envisioned an end to slavery, and an industrial future for America, but a man with his feudal, agrarian outlook would never have prospered in such a nation.
Abraham Lincoln’s entire life was shaped by disagreements with the Southern planter class, to which Washington and most of our early presidents belonged. When Lincoln was 7 years old, his family moved from Kentucky to Indiana to escape the fate of the small farmer squeezed between planter and slave. Lincoln’s father eventually settled on a 120-acre farm near Charleston, Ill., where he raised corn and chickens. Despite his popular image as the Railsplitter, Lincoln hated the rustic life, and moved to Springfield, where he became a respectable, but not wealthy, lawyer. His wo-story house on Eighth Street would not look out of place in a modern suburb.
In Lincoln’s home territory of Central Illinois, many voters hated slavery and African-Americans for the same reason: because both plantation owners and free African-Americans undercut the price of white labor. Lincoln belonged to a middle class of independent professionals and tradesmen that was growing in the North, but was incompatible with the plantation society in the South, and he knew how to appeal to its anxieties.
During his campaigns for the Senate and the presidency, Lincoln argued that African-Americans deserved economic, but not social, equality. In his debates with Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln declared that he did not believe African-Americans should be allowed to vote, or serve on juries, or hold office, or marry whites. He did believe that African-Americans had as much right to the fruits of their own labor as whites, that slavery was “a form of theft,” and that a society divided into permanent classes of masters and servants was doomed to medieval stagnation, because workers would have no motivation to better themselves. At the bottom of Lincoln’s moralizing was this message to white voters: If the black man can be made to work for nothing, so can you.
In an 1859 speech to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Lincoln went beyond condemning masters’ exploitation of their slaves, and criticized the very concept of purchasing another’s labor. To Lincoln, the idea that one man should be in the permanent employ of another — even for wages — was at the root of the justification for slavery. He said:
By some it is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital–that nobody labors, unless somebody else owning capital, somehow, by the use of it, induces him to do it. Having assumed this, they proceed to consider whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it, without their consent. Having proceeded so far, they naturally conclude that all laborers are necessarily either hired laborers, or slaves.
They further assume that whoever is once a hired laborer, is fatally fixed in that condition for life; and thence again, that his condition is as bad as, or worse, than that of a slave. This is the ‘mud-sill’ theory. But another class of reasoners hold the opinion that there is no such relation between capital and labor, as assumed; and that there is no such thing as a freeman being fatally fixed for life, on the condition of a hired laborer, that both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them groundless. They hold that labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed–that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior–greatly the superior of capital.As president, Lincoln oversaw a war that destroyed the power of the Southern plantation owners with whom he had so long quarreled. His victory lasted just over 100 years, until the Southern states regained control of the federal government, and began reimposing Washington’s aristocratic way of life on the nation. To understand the difference between Lincolnomics and Washingtonomics, let’s consider two of the most successful businessmen of the 20th century: Henry Ford and Sam Walton. Ford falls into the Lincolnian tradition, Walton into the Washingtonian.
Born in what is now Detroit during the Civil War, Ford understood the value of an economically empowered workforce. He turned traditional economic assumptions upside down by treating laborers not as commodities, but potential customers. Before Ford, planters and industrialists had profited by paying the lowest possible wages and charging the highest possible prices. Ford doubled his employees’ wages, to $5 a day, and used assembly-line efficiencies to produce cars they could afford to buy. His philosophy, which came to be known as Fordism, was fundamental to the development of the modern middle class. And although Ford resisted labor unions, once the United Auto Workers was forced on him by two Lincolnian politicians — President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Michigan Gov. Murray Van Wagoner — he granted it the most generous contract of any automaker, even allowing dues check-offs and the closed shop.
Sam Walton built his business on a plantation model with which Washington would have been familiar. The merchant opened his first Wal-Marts in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, paying wages that were low even for a region accustomed to extremes of wealth. He started his cashiers at 50 cents an hour — half the minimum wage — on the grounds that the law applied only to businesses with 50 employees or more, and each of his stores was more lightly staffed than that. Wal-Mart cashiers got raises only when the Labor Department stepped in. Like Washington’s tobacco plantation, Walton’s stores were labor-intensive operations that could only turn a profit if workers were bargained down to the lowest possible nickel. Walton’s product was low prices, which were possible only if his workers earned low wages. Undistracted by war or politics, Walton did Washington better, becoming the wealthiest man in America, with a fortune of $20 billion — the surplus he skimmed off the labor of 1.1 million employees. Wal-Mart also became the largest employer in the U.S., displacing General Motors, which practiced Fordism on an even larger scale than Ford.
“It is doubtful Wal-Mart would have met similar success in an earlier period of American economic history, or in a different social and political environment,” wrote Jeff Madrick in “Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present.” “Labor laws were increasingly poorly enforced in this era, starting with the Reagan administration. The number of government labor inspectors was not increased even as the nation’s workforce grew vastly in number … Across the nation, a rapidly growing number of workers were illegally fired when they tried to organize fellow workers into unions. Congress also deliberately kept the minimum wage down, raising it rarely, so it fell compared to inflation.”
Actually, the economic deregulation that would help make Sam Walton a multibillionaire began one president earlier, under Jimmy Carter. Carter, the son of a moderately prosperous peanut farmer whose land was worked by sharecroppers, was the first Southerner to win the presidency in his own right since Zachary Taylor. His election began a three-decade period during which every president either hailed from a Southern state or, in Ronald Reagan’s case, was elected with strong Southern support. George Washington’s region had returned to power, and that return brought political support for the stratified society that has existed in the South since the Father of Our Country’s day. As Michael Lind wrote here on Salon, “for generations Southern economic policymakers have sought to secure a lucrative second-tier role for the South in the national and world economies, as a supplier of commodities like cotton and oil and gas and a source of cheap labor for footloose corporations. This strategy of specializing in commodities and cheap labor is intended to enrich the Southern oligarchy. It doesn’t enrich the majority of Southerners, white, black or brown, but it is not intended to. Contrary to what is often said, the ‘original sin’ of the South is not slavery, or even racism. It is cheap, powerless labor.”
For a long time, that was a regional economic strategy, but once the South recaptured the federal government, it attempted to spread that ethos throughout the entire nation — with great success, as evidenced by today’s weak labor laws and lagging minimum wages. Wal-Mart could not have broken out of its cradle in Dixie and become the nation’s dominant retailer without those policies. Even Indiana and Michigan, once-reliable redoubts of free labor, recently became right-to-work states, putting themselves on the same page as every member of the old Confederacy.
The core principle of Lincoln’s political career (as opposed to his presidency) was preventing the spread of slavery into the territories and the Northern states, where it would undermine free labor. If we accept Lind’s argument about low-wage economic policies, we should be as determined as Lincoln to confine them to their native region. Or better yet, stamp them out altogether, as we did slavery. Because they are threatening the existence of a middle class.
The time may be right, too. Barack Obama is the first president elected from a Northern, industrial state since John F. Kennedy. From Lincoln’s own Illinois, in fact. Much has been made of that fact that Obama fulfilled the advances in racial equality that Lincoln began. But Lincoln didn’t free the slaves with the idea that one of them would become president. He gave them their freedom to prevent their unpaid labor from undercutting the middle class. That’s another aspect of Lincoln’s legacy Obama can fulfill.
The Universal Periodic Review and the case for a global standard of human rights
The Malaysian Insider
by SHERIDAN MAHAVERA
by SHERIDAN MAHAVERA
During the
recent Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, Finland got some harsh
words on its treatment of ethnic minorities, and the critic was none
other than Malaysia.
Malaysia
wanted the Nordic nation to combat racism, intolerance and growing
xenophobia in its society. It also urged Finland do more to promote
multi-culturalism and protect religious minorities.
Malaysia
even lambasted, using diplomatic language, the United Kingdom.
Putrajaya said Britain must do more to address negative attitudes
towards minority groups which include Muslims, and to stop racial
profiling.
If
you’re feeling nauseated, you’re not alone. A former member of Human
Rights Commission of Malaysia, or Suhakam, was quite beside himself when
he was told of the above statements, during a recent meeting in
Petaling Jaya by local human rights group Proham.
It
smacked of the Malaysian government's hypocrisy, coming at a time the
country barred its own Christian minority from using the word Allah, and
the stoking of racial tensions, particularly against the Chinese, in
the wake of the 13th general election.
According to the Suhakam commissioner, Malaysia’s hypocrisy reflected the futility of the whole UN process.
This year's UPR was held at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, involving 104 countries.
Proham secretary-general Datuk Denison Jayasooria. - The Malaysian Insider pic by Afif Abd Halim, November 17, 2013.
According
to Proham secretary-general Datuk Denison Jayasooria, the UPR is a
peer-review process with participating countries scrutinising each
other's human rights situation.
He
explained that the UN conventions on universal human rights act as the
yardstick which all member countries have agreed to in the UPR process.
The UPR calls attention to problems and recommends actions that should be taken to solve those problems in each country.
So
Malaysia gets to point out other countries’ problems and to recommend
solutions. In turn, these countries draw attention to Malaysia’s human
rights.
The countries can then decide whether to accept the recommendations, or simply ignore them completely.
It is this point that struck critics of the UPR.
“So
it’s like a meeting where everybody lives in a glass house and throws
stones at each other,” said the Suhakam member, sarcastically.
Such cynicism is not unqualified.
What’s the point of participating when there is no real international pressure for Malaysia to improve its human rights record?
Would it not be better to just concentrate on pushing for change from within the country?
Bar Council human rights committee co-chairman Andrew Khoo. - The Malaysian Insider pic by Afif Abd Halim, November 17, 2013.
Lawyer
Andrew Khoo explained that the peer review process of the UPR was
essentially a forum for countries to talk frankly about their neighbours
without seeming to interfere in each other’s affairs.
“For
Asean countries, especially, it’s one of the rare ways in which they
can point to each other's problems since Asean has a very strong
principle of non-interference.
“Because
what happens in one country affects others,” added Khoo, a co-chair of
the Bar Council’s human rights committee who was in Geneva to attend the
UPR session on Malaysia on October 24.
This
is illustrated in the comments made by Indonesia, Bangladesh, the
Philippines and Nepal on Malaysia’s treatment of migrant workers.
In total, Malaysia received 232 recommendations from Asian, African, Latin American and European countries.
There
were 20 recommendations for Malaysia to improve access to healthcare in
rural areas. This is while the country boasts of its success in
eradicating poverty.
According
to Khoo, most of the recommendations want Malaysia to do more to
protect political and civil liberties, including freedom of assembly and
speech, as well as rights of religious minorities.
They
urge Malaysia to endorse the nine main international treaties on human
rights, including a convention to end all forms of racial and gender
discrimination, to protect civil rights, to end torture, and to provide
for disabled persons, migrant workers and refugees.
Malaysia is signatory to only three of them, while Indonesia has signed eight.
Khoo stressed that every recommendation was important, and not just the sectors which got the most attention.
“Malaysia
can’t take for granted that it is doing well in certain areas and can
ignore other aspects of human rights. The overall message is that it
must push forward in all areas,” he cautioned.
Bringing human rights home
Does the country’s image on the world stage matter to ordinary Malaysians?
Of
late, some local Muslim groups have spoken out against the UPR process,
claiming it was part of a “Western, liberal” agenda to undermine
Islamic values.
An
officer from the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia or Jakim
addressing a seminar last month on the 'dangers of liberalism'. - The
Malaysian Insider pic by Nazir Sufari, November 17, 2013.
They
zeroed in on recommendations touching on freedom of sexual orientation
and freedom of religion as examples of this “Western, liberal agenda”.
Yet, Denison pointed out that these were not the main recommendations made to Malaysia.
Missing
from the argument were the recommendations from other Muslim countries
urging Malaysia to protect freedom of expression and assembly, migrants'
welfare and indigenous rights, as well as to end gender discrimination
and human trafficking.
In
an article published by The Malaysian Insider, Rama Ramanathan wrote
that 35 Muslim countries including Indonesia, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco
and Turkey had sent 77 recommendations to Malaysia.
Denison
pointed out that the whole idea of a global human rights standard has
the full support of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which has
its own independent and permanent human rights commission.
“The
OIC is the second largest intergovernmental organisation... If the OIC
takes a strong position on human rights, why is there a portrayal (in
Malaysia) that human rights is a western agenda?” asked Denison.
This
human rights standard has been the basis for the OIC to campaign for
European countries to protect the rights of Muslim minorities there and
to end discrimination against them.
“So
if the OIC uses the framework of human rights to press for the
protection of Muslims, Muslims in Malaysia cannot turn around and say
human rights is a ‘Western agenda’,” added Denison.
The
whole concept of a universal standard for human rights is to protect
the individual from oppression, he said, whether it comes from
individuals or governments.
It
is the foundation upon which modern societies for the past 67 years
have been built on. Even societies slacking in human rights have
recognised its importance and try to adopt the standard.
Such
a standard has largely kept peace and harmony between different peoples
and religions, especially in a diverse society such as Malaysia,
protecting Muslims and non-Muslims.
Herein lies the importance of universal human rights to ordinary Malaysians. - November 17, 2013.
Racism and inequality
Government leaders preach inclusiveness and togetherness. At the very least they pretend to want that. The idea of togetherness and inclusiveness can be summed up in the powerful idea of unity.
Something of that nature cannot be sold like an advertising product and commoditised- it must be secured by living out that experience. It must be practised as an everyday life experience.
Something of that nature too must be formed on the basis of earning and giving trust. The government has neither earned our trust and they have never trusted the people.
PM Najib paid a lot of money to consulting firms to come up with slogans to reflect the idea. He has actually paid RM7.2 billion to a number of consultants since 2009. Over a 5 year period, the fee is like RM3.945 million a day.
We won’t know how much PM Najib paid consultants who came out with slogans and follow through plans of 1Malaysia and now Endless Possibilities. What seems truly endless is the rapacious appetite to gobble up taxpayers’ money.
Judging by Najib’s addiction to top market branding, the fees must have run into billions too.
After 5 years, it appears that a slogan such as 1Malaysia is actually an advertisement product. We have all been suckered and our brains drugged. We have been intravenously injected with hallucinating ideas by marketing consulting firms.
Najib is the 1Malaysia Junkie. For Najib to get high and knocked off means nothing because he does it with taxpayers money. Since it has not worked out, another political advertisement product is introduced into the market. It is called endless possibilities.
That’s an even screwier one since whatever possible outcome can never be defined or finite.
It all now appears that these two ideas are just products ingeniously created by a marketing consulting firm or firms. Instead of selling definite products, they are selling an incorporeal idea. Which is even bloodier expensive. They all have a finite life span.
With so much money and hype as all great advertisements got and create; we expect the outcome desired to have been achieved. In the conduct of business, government leaders who must first believe in their own hype would have all preached and practised a life of inclusiveness and togetherness.
In reality, this government is utterly irresponsible, racist and divisive. One can be a racialist in the sense one can’t separate one’s ethnicity. We can be hostile towards one another because of a given construct. But the hostility ceases when we interact and play down our natural differences and operate on similarities and cultivated trust. The natural given can be moderated by awareness and understanding and trust.
But being a racist suggests the presence of overwhelming hatefulness towards the others not belonging to one’s race. The hatred is reflected in a variety of forms- attributing blameworthiness, presupposing guilt, or simply suspecting the other being the cause of one’s shortcomings and failings.
This is what Najib and his government is doing. Blaming others for his government’s failings and shortcomings serves a self-serving political purpose- blaming others deflects blame that ought to go to them. Blaming others shields those in power. So it must be done even at the expense of civility, inclusiveness and togetherness and moving forward as one nation one Malaysian race equal before the law.
Look at the 2012 Household Income Survey. I am not producing the data here. These are government figures.
Since 1970 to 2012, the top 20% of the population has always cornered on average, 52% of the country’s income. The bottom feeders- the bottom 40% has always shared on the average about 12.5% of the income.
The bottom feeders are members of the Sad Class- 80% of whom are Malays. Why is that? Why this consistent inequality?
Let me ask you some simple questions – the members of the administration, the leadership of the civil service, the leaders of industry, the professionals, the top flight bankers and lawyers – which category do they belong? They belong as you rightly answer to the top 20%. Now who makes the policies that supports the current version of the market system in Malaysia? The same people in the top 20% group.
The point is this. Much of the inequality that has persisted over almost 50 years is the result of this government’s policies. The inequality exists because of government policy. Because the government has the power to move money from the top to the middle and to the bottom. It has the power to make sure money, the bulk of it stays among the top 20%, move a little in the middle 40% and move even littler in the bottom 40%.
Now, look at the figures in the table below. All data are from the same 2012 Household Income Survey.
| Race | 2002 | 2012 | x |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bumi | 2376 | 4457 | 1.87 |
| Chinese | 4279 | 6366 | 1.48 |
| Indian | 3044 | 5233 | 1.72 |
| Others | 2165 | 3843 | 1.77 |
Here is the strike. If Malay income has improved best, don’t the BN leaders especially UMNO leaders have no shame blaming others especially Chinese for this achievement? Or are they concealing something and blaming others for their own shortcomings and failings?
Things like the Malay member of the top 20% earns an average monthly income of RM 10,666 while the Malay member of the sad class earns an average monthly income of less than RM1200? – sakmongkol.blogspot.com, November 17, 2013.
* Sakmongkol AK47 is the nom de guerre of Datuk Ariff Sabri Abdul Aziz who is the Raub MP.
Indonesia Recalls Its Ambassador From Australia Over Wiretapping Issue
By Ahmad Fuad Yahya
JAKARTA, Nov 18 (Bernama) -- Indonesia Monday recalled its ambassador from Australia and ordered a review of bilateral cooperation following reports that an Australian security agency attempted to tap telephone conversations of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia's First Lady Ibu Ani Yudhoyono and several cabinet members.
Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said the ambassador, Nadjib Riphat, was recalled to seek clarification of what was happening in Australia.
He said Indonesia felt the ambassador would not be able to carry out his duties effectively due to the current diplomatic furore over the wiretapping issue that was extensively reported.
"I have told the ambassador to not only come back with his cabin bag. We are awaiting an answer from the Australian government and will take one step at a time," said Marty at a press conference.
It was reported that Australian intelligence tried to listen in to Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's mobile phone conversation in 2009, material leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed.
The leaked documents by Edward Snowden were received by the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the The Guardian daily.
Meanwhile, Indonesia's coordinating minister for security, law and political affairs, Djoko Suyanto told reporters that the Indonesian government would request the Australia government to issue an official explanation on the matter quickly.
Indonesia would also urge Australia to repeat such activities.
-- BERNAMA
JAKARTA, Nov 18 (Bernama) -- Indonesia Monday recalled its ambassador from Australia and ordered a review of bilateral cooperation following reports that an Australian security agency attempted to tap telephone conversations of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia's First Lady Ibu Ani Yudhoyono and several cabinet members.
Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said the ambassador, Nadjib Riphat, was recalled to seek clarification of what was happening in Australia.
He said Indonesia felt the ambassador would not be able to carry out his duties effectively due to the current diplomatic furore over the wiretapping issue that was extensively reported.
"I have told the ambassador to not only come back with his cabin bag. We are awaiting an answer from the Australian government and will take one step at a time," said Marty at a press conference.
It was reported that Australian intelligence tried to listen in to Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's mobile phone conversation in 2009, material leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed.
The leaked documents by Edward Snowden were received by the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the The Guardian daily.
Meanwhile, Indonesia's coordinating minister for security, law and political affairs, Djoko Suyanto told reporters that the Indonesian government would request the Australia government to issue an official explanation on the matter quickly.
Indonesia would also urge Australia to repeat such activities.
-- BERNAMA
Minister grilled over jet ride for Rosmah paid by gov't
Opposition MPs asked whether Rosmah was allowed such privileges according to government rules, to which Shahidan (right) replied: "The trip was approved by the cabinet, which agreed that the trip was important, and allowed for the use of the jet."At this, Azmin Ali (PKR-Gombak) stood up to point out that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak chaired the cabinet meeting and it was a conflict of interest for him to approve a jet ride for his wife.
"Did the prime minister leave the room before a decision was made for the approval?" Azman demanded to know.
The led Hanipa Maidin (PAS-Sepang) to stand up and say the prime minister could be charged in court if he did not follow procedures in deciding on a matter that has conflict of interest.
However, Shahidan refused to say whether the prime minister was involved in the decision-making, insisting that it was an official trip.
"His wife was representing the country, for the interest of the people," he said.The response opened another cans of worms as Mahfuz Omar (PAS-Pokok Sena, right)) questioned whether a prime minister wife is allowed to represent the country on bilateral ties.
"It is okay for the wife to accompany the prime minister but to represent the country is an anomaly and does not happen anywhere else in the world," Mahfuz said.
Fumbling answers
Shahidan then attempted to respond but provided a series of confusing answers.
Using himself as example, Shahidan said that even he would be representing Malaysia in a conference in Ankara, Turkey soon.
At this, several MPs stood up and responded: "You are a minister, of course you can represent Malaysia, but not your wife".
Shahidan then used an example of MPs too being allowed to represent Malaysia overseas, as opposition MPs again pointed out that they represented Parliament and not their wives.
The minister who was visibly annoyed and he finally said that the trip was an official one and refused to say anymore.
Rosmah went to Qatar by jet on Nov 10, for the 4th Qatar International Businesswomen's Forum.
'Why Najib not supporting MAS'
Earlier, Anthony Loke (DAP-Seremban) also hit out at Najib for his penchant for executive jets and for not using the national carrier Malaysia Airlines for his official trips.
"How
can the government expect the rakyat to support Malaysia Airlines when
the head of government himself will not support the national carrier?"
Loke (right) asked.Even Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, he said, travelled on Singapore Airlines.
However, Shahidan claimed that relying on commercial flights, especially for last minute trips, could sometimes be more costly than using executive jets.
"It is not logical to expect the prime minister to follow commercial flight schedules. Using jets is his privilege," he said.
Earlier this month, the government had revealed to Parliament that the use of jets by the government had cost RM14.95 million for fuel and RM160.08 million on maintenance, with a single flight costing around RM470,000.
Education Ministry mulls royal status for UiTM
“On the royal status, this is something that we are looking at and will expedite,” he said in response to a question from Irmohizan Ibrahim (BN-Kuala Selangor) during Question Time.
Earlier this month, Irmohizan when debating the budget speech in Parliament had suggested that UiTM be made a royal university so detractors will stop “challenging” the institution.
“I suggest that UiTM is declared a royal university so its status as an institution only for the bumiputera will not be challenged (diganggu-gugat),” he had said.
Kamalanathan said UiTM is expected to increase its students by some 50,000 by 2016.
On another matter, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Shahidan Kassim told Parliament that there are currently 1,132,450 civil servants excluding the police and military.
“Of
this, 77.4 percent are our Malay friends, 6.2 percent are our Chinese
friends, 4.1 percent are our Indian friends, 6.6 percent are Sabah
bumiputera, 4.3 percent are Sarawak bumiputera and the rest make up 1.4
percent,” he said.He added that 29.2 percent of civil servants have at least a degree while 70.8 percent are without a degree or lower education level.
Shahidan said the bulk of the 70.8 percent group carry out government works and mostly comprise of bumiputeras.
Surendran: I'll be back ... with a vengeance!
The ban has done little to deter PKR’s Padang Serai MP from doing what he does best, raising public interest issues, especially those involving the minority Indian Malaysian community.
'I
will continue to do whatever I have been doing before what happened to
me. The only thing I cannot do is to raise issues of public interest in
Parliament. They have successfully prevented me from doing that,”
Surendran said.He was speaking to Malaysiakini at a Deepavali celebration yesterday evening in Bayan Baru, hosted by Penang Deputy Chief Minister I Rashid Hasnon.
Although his ouster had only been in effect for three days, he was already planning his comeback.
"I will bombard Parliament about petitions from aggrieved citizens. There will be more emergency motions from me, more presentations on the problems that people have - whether it is the issue of stateless people with red identity cards or deaths in custody," he said.
Surendran has yet to accept the reason for his removal from the Dewan Rakyat. The motion filed by Nancy Shukri, a Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, had received the support of the 92 BN parliamentarians present.
In a dramatic move, his Pakatan Rakyat comrades boycotted the bloc voting process. Some tore up the motion papers while others crumpled it in protest of the “illegal” suspension. They also described it as conflict of interest" since the matter involved the speaker.
"It was vindictive, illegal and really aimed at silencing my voice in Parliament," Surendran said."They are not victimising me but victimising ordinary people, whose interests I was speaking up for. In this case, it was the temple demolition issue.”
Surendran was ejected for attempting to read out an emergency motion on the demolition of the annexe to the Sri Muneswarar Kaliyamman Temple on Jalan P Ramlee. Speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia rejected this on technical grounds.
Asked if he would hold press conferences to raise issues at the Parliament lobby, since he is only allowed there, Surendran said: "There wouldn't be any point ... I can do it anywhere else.
"But what I will focus on is to use the time for more cases of people who need my help.”
Roadshows for reform
Surendran said his suspension has highlighted a major problem in Dewan Rakyat, which he has resolved to address while he is still a member of parliament.
“Parliament is a lackey and is not functioning in its role to keep democracy alive," he said.
He
has therefore pledged to start a nationwide campaign to reform
Parliament and restore its independence, so that it can provide adequate
checks and balances."We must ensure that the speaker is independent. Currently, the two deputy speakers sit at BN benches and they vote. Yet, they get angry when I say the speaker is biased," he noted.
As a sign of protest, Surendran said he has refused to send questions to Parliament, as MPs do do ahead of sittings.
"This is a serious matter because Parliament has been passing all kinds of oppressive laws. It has been rotten for 50 years and I want to clean it up," he said.
Surendran was on his way to his constituency in southern Kedah when he dropped in at the Deepavali function, which drew some 2,000 people.
Also at the event were state executive councillor Dr Afif Bahardin, Bayan Baru MP Sim Tze Tzin, state assemblyperson Dr T Jayabalan and former Penang speaker Abdul Halim Hussein.
Second ever disabled senator sworn in
She was sworn in before Dewan Negara speaker Abu Zahar Ujang in his office in Parliament House this morning. It was witnessed by several representatives from NGOs for the disabled.
"Even though you are handicapped, I want you to speak up in the Dewan Negara," Abu Zahar (left) said when congratulating Bathmavathi.He added that the appointment showed that the Dewan Negara represented people of all communities.
Bathmavathi, whose birthday was yesterday, described her appointment as "the best birthday gift" for her.
"My priority will be to see that accessibility issues of the disabled community are addressed.
"I will also bring the concerns of the disabled community to improve their standard of living and quality of life during my tenure," she said.
Bathamavathi has been involved in disabled issues for 35 years and speaks six languages and dialects, including Mandarin.
The first disabled senator was Ismail Md Salleh, who was appointed in 2007. Ismail, who was visually impaired, passed away in 2009.
Ku Li to retire after term of 13th Parliament ends
First elected to the Dewan Rakyat in 1974, longest-serving MP Tengku
Razaleigh Hamzah says he will retire from the House after this
parliamentary term ends.The Gua Musang MP said he will by then be 81 years, and "it will be better to pack up", the New Straits Times reported.
This will be the same for his post as Gua Musang Umno division chief, a position he has held since 1962 (when the division was known as Hulu Kelantan).
However,
in an exclusive interview with the daily, Tengku Razaleigh said
retiring will not mean it will be the last the Malaysians hear from him,
for he will continue to speak on other public platforms.Among them is Angkatan Amanah Merdeka, a group launched in 2011 to push policy ideas in line with the thoughts of the nation's founding fathers.
This includes the National Stakeholders' Economic Action Plan - or the Amanah Plan - that was launched in September. Among its targets are the abolition of affirmative action that favours only one race, the Bumiputera Economic Empowerment.
Foreign investors, he claimed, were offering funds of up to US$30 billion (RM96 billion) under the Amanah Plan.
Commenting on the recent general election, which saw him doubling his winning majority, he said that BN was having a tough time as it has been "rejected" by urbanites.
"If the thinking people are not with you, it's very tough. You can't rely on the rural votes. Malaysia is 70 percent urban and this will increase over time. The young also voted against us," he said.
Similarly, Tengku Razaleigh said, the BN is not likely to regain his home state of Kelantan, which he had seen change hands from PAS to Umno in 1978 and then back to PAS in 1990.
Embittered by Umno's failure to keep promises
Going down memory lane in the interview, Razaleigh, who was an Umno vice-president at 37 and finance minister at 39, said the Semangat 46 experience left him bitter.
He had founded Semangat 46 following a split within Umno, where he lost by 46 votes in the 1987 conrest for deputy president, which he subsequently challenged.
This led to Umno being declared illegal in 1988, and re-registered as Umno Baru.
In 1996, Semangat 46 was disbanded and 200,000 application forms were submitted to the new Umno.
However, to this day, 36,000 of those applications were rejected despite a public guarantee made by Umno to accept all of them back into the fold.
"The guarantee was not kept... I felt very bitter. It appeared as if I was only thinking of myself and that I walked back into Umno and the others were left behind."
'12-year limit on cars will leave families in debt'
“It
will mean that, three years after servicing their automobile debts,
they will have to take another loan,” the party’s Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli
said in a statement. Rafizi, who is also PKR's director of strategy said the situation is worse for those in the lower income group who now can only afford to take loans for older cars, which are sold at lower prices.
If the ruling is implemented, he said, they will have to contine to service their loans even though their cars are deemed unsafe and illegal to use.
“This policy should only be implemented once car prices in Malaysia for the same models are comparable to those in other countries,” he said.
Rafizi,
who played a key role in Pakatan Rakyat's election pledge to reduce car
prices through abolition of excise tax, said the main issue is still
the fact that car prices are too high. “It is reported that car prices in Malaysia are the second highest in the world, due to the tax structure and domestic market.
“Excise taxes of 100 percent on cars drown middle to lower income families in automobile debts which are far too high.”
Such convoluted excise taxes structures allow car distirbutors to raise car prices under the guise of taxes, he noted.
If the excise tax is abolished, then there would be “healthy competition between car producers and operators, resulting in globally competitive car prices”.
‘Policy to save lives'
Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi reportedly said on Saturday that the government is mulling a life span for vehicles in order “to protect lives”.
He was quoted as saying that this is based on findings by the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety that cars more than 12 years old are unsafe for use.
Pakatan had in its election manifesto last May promised to bring down car prices by abolishing excise tax, if it is elected into government.
Industry players said that this would adversely impact owners as it would quickly devalue their cars. However, they gave the policy proposal the thumbs-up as a whole, saying that the market would adjust to the lower prices in a year or two.
The BN, in its manifesto, said it would reduce car prices, but not through an excise tax cut of up to 30 percent, but by negotiating with manufacturers.
It also argued that cutting excise taxes would create too big a dent in the coffers, although Pakatan countered that this would be filled by auctioning approved permits during its phase-out programme.
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