Rakan Chin Peng masih rasa dikhianati

Don't weaken the Malay race further

The Malays are a pretty decent race, very pleasant and friendly and in many ways a hard-working race, too.

They have been living in peninsula Malaya for many decades. It is because the land is fertile and the rivers are blessed with abundant fish and prawns, they, therefore, do not have to toil very hard to have a fairly comfortable life.

The powers-that-be have been introducing all sorts of policies to more or less spoon-feed them. The NEP is a case in point.

Now Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak introduces another policy know as Bumiputra Economic Empowerment programme (BEE).

As if the Malays have not been weakened enough. The BEE is in fact "old wine in new bottle".

But BEE is much stronger with higher octane number in that the alcoholic content is very much higher.

This will ensure that the intoxication will make the Malays much weaker and much addicted to government spoon-feeding. The BN government is dominated by Umno members.

Najib wants to secure his position in Umno election so that he will continue to be PM.

Therefore, he must come up with policies that can muster Umno members into supporting him. He, therefore, introduces the BEE just to keep him in power.

He purportedly claims that it is a token of thanks to the Malays who voted for BN in GE13. In fact it is for his survival in the Umno polls.

The maverick lawyer-cum-politician Zaid Ibrahim is spot-on when he said that the BEE will make the Malays lazier.

PM Najib should in fact introduce policies that will wean off the addiction of the Malays in depending on government hand-outs.

This will restore their hardworking trait without the BEE, a race-based affirmative action to help the majority Malays in this country.

The Umno goons being selfish and ignorant, they only care for themselves and their positions and power to rule the country.

They never bother about the long-term welfare of the Malays.

They never realise that the addiction inflicted on the Malays will make it harder to rehabilitate and get rid off if the spoon-feeding policies continue perpetually.

Malaysia now may have abundant resources. But these resources will deplete over time.

The government will soon not be able to have the means to feed the Malays. When that happens, how can the Malays survive?

Please withdraw the BEE straightaway for the good of the Malays. Then slowly introduce policies that will wean them off the addiction to depend on hand-outs.

This way, the Malays will slowly regain their strength to compete with other races in the country.

The BN must find policies which can strengthen the competitive traits in the Malays, not otherwise.

Najib, Muhyiddin kekal jawatan Presiden, Timb Presiden Umno

Tidak ada borang pencalonan lain diserahkan selain yang dikemukakan kedua pemimpin itu apabila proses penyerahan borang pencalonan tamat 5 petang ini.

KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak dan Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin masing-masing mengekalkan jawatan Presiden dan Timbalan Presiden Umno apabila diumum menang tanpa bertanding hari ini.

Pengerusi Jawatankuasa Pemilihan Umno Tan Sri Tajol Rosli mengumumkan tiada borang pencalonan lain diserahkan selain yang dikemukakan kedua-dua pemimpin itu apabila proses penyerahan borang pencalonan tamat 5 petang ini.

Najib memegang jawatan itu sejak 2009 setelah menang tanpa bertanding ketika itu, manakala Muhyiddin juga memenangi jawatan itu sejak 2009 setelah menewaskan bekas Menteri Besar Selangor Tan Sri Muhammad Muhd Taib.

Uniknya pada proses pendaftaran calon hari ini, kedua-dua pemimpin tertinggi parti itu merupakan pencadang bagi pencalonan sesama mereka.

Muhyiddin merupakan pencadang Najib bagi jawatan Presiden, manakala Najib pula menjadi pencadang Muhyiddin untuk jawatan Timbalan Presiden.

Mahathir: Reject corrupt candidates

(The Star) - As Umno goes into election mode, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has called on the 146,500 delegates to reject corrupt candidates.

He said voting in corrupt leaders would be detrimental to the party, as they risk facing the brunt of the electorates in the next general election.

“If we choose corrupt leaders, they would have no qualms selling out the race,” he said on his blog.

Dr Mahathir also called for the weeding out of deadwood and replacing them with young blood in order to rejuvenate the party.

He said Umno should get as many youths with nationalist spirit to join the party.

He also took a swipe at detractors who claimed that he was trying to remain in power by proxy through his son Mukhriz, who is vying the vice-president post.

“If I want to help my son, I would have done that when I was the Prime Minister.

“But I did not do that,” said Dr Mahathir.

Mukhriz, meanwhile, said that if his father had any intention of creating a dynasty, he would have allowed him to be active in politics while he was in power.

“But my father only allowed his kin to be active in politics after his retirement,” he said.

The world will laugh at us, says ex-top cop who negotiated 1989 peace treaty with Chin Peng

A former top cop has warned that Malaysia will be made a laughing stock if the government is adamant about its “naïve” decision to refuse to allow Chin Peng’s ashes to be brought back to be interred.

Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Mohd Noor, a former inspector-general of police, said this would also help turn the ex-communist leader into an icon and that it was a step backwards in the government’s attempts to win back Chinese support following the poor performance in the last general election.

“There is a hue and cry from the public not to even allow his ashes (back into Malaysia). My God... this is stretching the argument a bit too far. It’s a bit naive I think.

“If the government succumbs to this public pressure not to allow Chin Peng's ashes to be brought back, I think, we are making Malaysia a laughing stock to the whole world,” he said in an interview from the United Kingdom that aired on BFM yesterday.

Abdul Rahim, who was Special Branch director at that time, led the peace talks which culminated in the Haadyai Peace Treaty 1989. It officially ended the Communist Party of Malaya’s armed struggle against the government.

The refusal to allow Chin Peng into the country even when he was alive, he said, also made a mockery of the 1989 treaty.

He said he convinced the government at that time to engage with the communists in talks, more than 30 years after the failed 1955 Baling negotiations.

He said that even though the 12-year Emergency was lifted in 1960, security forces were still battling communist remnants in the 1980s, but the decline of communism in the region was an opportunity for renewed peace negotiations.

At that time, there were still around 2,000 communists along the Malaysian-Thai border, with the two largest groups being the North Malayan Bureau and the 10th Regiment, which largely comprised Malays, he said.

He said that with the backing of then prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the Special Branch secretly initiated negotiations with the communists at the end of 1987 and early 1988 on Phuket Island over five rounds of talks.

As a result, the 1989 treaty was signed in Haadyai comprising two agreements, one containing the core terms and the other administrative details on how the terms would be implemented.

“I was involved in the drafting of both agreements, so I know full well that under the terms of the agreements, all the agreements applied are binding on every CPM member, from the highest topmost to the bottom.

“So if you say that Chin Peng, as secretary-general of the party (CPM) is the highest most member, then he qualifies to get all the privileges, advantages or whatever promises made in the agreement, which includes for him to be allowed to come back (to Malaysia),” Abdul Rahim said.

He said, according to the agreement, in the event these former communist members were not allowed to permanently return to Malaysia, they should be allowed to enter the country on social visits.

“But in the case of Chin Peng, he was not allowed both. To me, it’s absurd, totally absurd. It’s unfair, grossly unfair... There were other ex-communists who were allowed to come back and they were mainly Malays,” he said.

“Abdullah CD (CPM chairperson) was allowed to come back to Malaysia and was even given an audience with the current sultan of Perak. Rashid Maidin (CPM central committee member), I was told, performed his pilgrimage through KL with the help of the Malaysian authorities. What’s all this?”

He, however, was not prepared to presume that the government’s decision was along racial lines. As far as he was concerned, in Chin Peng’s case, the government had made a mockery of the peace agreement.

He said the public did not seem to understand the context of the international communist struggle and instead perceived the 40 years of communist insurrection in Malaya was Chin Peng’s fight alone and that he was the only one calling all the shots.

“I do not know why it should develop along this line (Chin Peng versus government). The fact is that good or bad - whatever Chin Peng was - the background is a peace treaty had been signed. We got to jolly well honour the terms and conditions,” he said.

Chin Peng spent a third of his life in exile in Thailand.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has said the country will not budge from its stand to prevent Chin Peng’s remains from being brought back, and challenged those unhappy with the decision to seek legal redress.

Checkpoints into the country were also on high alert to prevent his remains from being smuggled in.

Yesterday, Barisan National coalition party MCA said that Chin Peng's remains should be allowed to be brought back here for last rites.

The party's bureau chairman Datuk Heng Seai Kie, in explanation, pointed out that the remains of terrorists Dr Azahari Husin and Nordin Mohamad Top were allowed to be buried in Malaysia.

In response, Malay rights group Perkasa took MCA to task, warning the party not to “upset the Malays”.

Its secretary-general Syed Hassan Syed Ali said many Malays and Chinese had died at the hands of the communists.

Chin Peng, whose real name was Ong Boon Hua, died in a Bangkok hospital on Malaysia Day, a month short of his 89th birthday. He had repeatedly voiced his wish to be buried in his hometown of Sitiawan, Perak.

He fled to China in 1961 and later settled in Bangkok where he was granted an alien passport.

He reportedly moved to Haadyai in recent years and shuttled between Haadyai and Bangkok for cancer treatment.

He became secretary-general of the Communist Party of Malaya at the age of 23 and was Britain’s “enemy number one” in Southeast Asia at the height of the communist insurgency in Malaya. - September 21, 2013.

In Mukhriz, Zaid sees no trace of “Mahathirism”

(MM) - Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir found an unlikely supporter today in one of his father’s more strident critics, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, who urged Umno members to give the vice-president hopeful a chance in the coming party polls.

Zaid, a former Umno man himself, said Mukhriz will provide “good balance” to the status quo and even dismissed talk that the latter’s leadership would see a return to the era of “Mahathirism”.

“Naive to think Mukhriz will bring back Mahathirism,” Zaid wrote in a series of postings on his Twitter page this afternoon.

“Mukhriz will provide good balance ; the Champions of the Malays must come from different group. Otherwise plunder will be worse.

“Mukhriz not a smooth talker but he should be given a chance. Being nationalistic not a sin, being corrupt and hypocritical is,” he added.

Mukhriz has thrown his hat in the ring for the Umno vice-presidency, effectively turning the heat on in a crowded race among powerful leaders like incumbents Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein and Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal; and aspirants Datuk Seri Ali Rustam and Tan Sri Abdul Isa Samad, both wily old campaigners.

A victory by Mukhriz in the vice-presidency race would put him on the path to mount a challenge for the number two spot in Umno ahead of the 14th general election, which, if successful, could make him Malaysia’s next deputy prime minister.

Political analysts have said that Mukhriz’s bid for ascendancy signalled the desire of Umno’s “old guard” to preserve conservative leanings in the dominant Malay party.

Pro-Mahathir bloggers have begun campaigning for Mukhriz, seeing in him the return to the days where Dr Mahathir ruled with an iron grip and a reversal of policies that purportedly allowed the special position of the Malays to be challenged.

Professor Datuk Mohamad Abu Bakar, political scientist from Universiti Malaya, noted last Thursday that Mukhriz has yet to show that he is a “man of his own”, and that the 48-year-old is seen instead as living in his father’s shadow.

But in an interview on Berita Harian today, Mukhriz dismissed this, saying he does not intend to continue the political dynasty of his father Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad with his entry in the Umno vice-presidency race.

Mukhriz, who is also the Kedah mentri besar, said that he had his own ideas, although he would not negate the good that the former prime minister has done and that he was “excited” to continue what Dr Mahathir has fought for.

“My presence is not to create a dynasty,” Mukhriz said in an interview with the Malay-language daily.

“Coincidentally, I am interested in politics even though my father curbed my interest during the time he was leading the country,” he added.

This year’s Umno polls will see some 146,500 delegates directly elect their top leaders after the party amended its constitution to allow more members to vote, up from the previous 2,500.

Nominations for the Umno supreme council elections will be held on September 28 and voting on October 19.

'Najib was wrong, Chin Peng did apply to come home'

Contrary to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's claim, Chin Peng's former comrades and family members have insisted that the late Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) leader had applied to return home following the 1989 Hatyai Peace Accord.

"The lawyers requested three documents from the Home Ministry when Chin Peng first filed the case (to return home) in the Penang High Court.

"The first was a list provided by CPM of those who have applied to go back (to Malaysia), the second a list of those rejected by the government and third, a list of those approved.
                                  
"Chin Peng's name was in the first document, proving he had applied," his ex-comrade Nan Jin told the media at the sidelines of the second day of Chin Peng's wake in Bangkok today.

Chin Peng's nephew, Lee Chung, added that a news article in 1991 also quoted then inspector- general of police Haniff Omar that the former's uncle had applied towards the end of the one-year stipulated application period.
              
He also pointed out that then police Special Branch chief Zulkifli Abdul Rahman was quoted in the same year as claiming that Chin Peng's application was being processed.

"So what (Prime Minister) Najib Abdul Razak said is not the truth because logically, the 1991 statements show that an application was made," he said.

Najib said the remains of Chin Peng – or his real name Ong Boon Hua – would not be allowed on Malaysian soil as he did not apply within the one-year period after the Peace Accord and that the family can sue the government if it disagrees.

Chin Peng lost his case in 2008 when he could not produce identification documents to prove his citienship to the Court of Appeal.

'We'll bring him home with dignity'
Meanwhile, Lee Chung's brother Lee Suvit said the family would "do their best" to fulfill his wish to have his remains returned to his hometown of Sitiawan, Perak.

"We will try to bring him back with dignity," said Suvit, whose sister cared for Chin Peng until he died of cancer on Sept 16.

The Thai national said that despite dying in exile, Chin Peng died "calm and happy", having spent his twilight years with family, writing and taking walks, "just like any other old man".

While the rest of the world may focus on Chin Peng's political role, for the family, it would be his jokes and kindness which would be missed the most.

Painting a picture of a much-loved patriach, he said that Chin Peng would play his harmonica at family gatherings and his favourite tune was the song “Red Flag”.

Suvit said that even Chin Peng's absence in his children's life was an act of sacrifice to "protect them". Both children are Malaysians and shy away from the public eye to avoid possible reprisals.

Suvit said that his daughter, now only a year younger than Chin Peng when he became CPM secretary-general at 23, grew very close to him.

Yet, he said, Chin Peng's grandnieces and grandnephews, who were seen at the wake, do not know much about their granduncle's political significance.

Born and bred in modern Thailand, their lives are a far cry compared to Chin Peng's who joined the resistance at 15.

"Mine, too, is very different. He used to say 'times were tough in my days' and we'd brush him off.

"Maybe (his grandnephews and grandnieces) know some stories about him from us, but I think they just know that their granduncle is a good man, and whatever his struggle was, it was for a good cause," he said.

Suvit, who now owns a factory in Shanghai, said his own grandchildren would know even less about Chin Peng.

"There is no need to pass down stories about his struggle to the coming generations. They can read about his role in Malaysia's Independence and Southeast Asia in books. He is part of history," he said.

Two Indian Institute of Science scientists crack mystery of black holes

Black holes, as stars are known postdeath, are not visible to the plain eye.

BANGALORE: A scientist from Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, and his student have successfully applied Albert Einstein's gravity theory to unlock the mysteries of black holes.

Banibrata Mukhopadhyay, associate professor, department of physics, IISc, and his student Indrani Banerjee worked for over two years for their landmark discovery. Their study on black holes has been acknowledged by the scientific community across the globe, including professors from Harvard University. The duo has published its findings in the international journal Physical Review Letters.

Black holes, as stars are known postdeath, are not visible to the plain eye. Though not visible, black holes devour everything in their neighbourhood given the gravitational pulls they exercise. It was hitherto believed that mass and spin are the determining properties of black holes and they would go a long way in determining the influence of black holes on their neighbourhood as well as their pre-death star existence.

Their new study, says Banibrata, who worked in Harvard for three years before joining IISc in 2007, throws more light on black holes and their properties, particularly the correlation between mass and spin or rotation. They have proved that mass and spin are not independent of each other but actually interdependent. They have established that mass of the star could be used to calculate the spin.

"The spin of the observed black holes is still a debatable issue — the exact value of the spin is not known. On the other hand mass can be determined more easily. Rotation of the black hole is determined by the mass and rotation of the initial star. The larger the mass of the initial star the greater it tends to have a high rotational speed and turn into swiftly spinning black holes. The smaller the mass of the initial star the slower its rotation and spin. This property shows that spin and mass are correlated. Hence if mass is known, the spin can be predicted. Eventually, only one fundamental parameter characterizes the black hole," Banibrata explained.

Indrani, a PhD student of physics, said, "First we were working on how stars collapse and end up into black holes. During the research, the thought of discovering the properties emerged," she said.

WHAT ARE BLACK HOLES?

Black holes are formed when stars exhaust their 'nuclear fuel' or are 'dead'. They are abyssinian spaces that exert strong gravitational force on everything in their vicinity. The hole is called 'black' because it absorbs all the light that hits the horizon, reflecting nothing. The largest black holes are called 'supermassive'. These black holes have masses that are more than 1 million suns together.

Pekerja binaan jumpa ‘lintah gergasi’

Sungai Siput: Beberapa pekerja binaan yang sedang menggali longkang berhampiran kawasan perindustrian di Kampung Muhibbah, di sini, bertempiaran melarikan diri sejurus terserempak haiwan aneh seperti ‘lintah gergasi’, pagi semalam.

Haiwan bertubuh lembik seberat 25 kilogram dan panjang hampir dua meter itu menggerunkan penduduk berikutan turut mempunyai bentuk muka menyerupai anjing.

Pekerja yang enggan namanya disiarkan berkata, haiwan itu ditemui di dalam longkang yang digali mereka pada jam 10.15 pagi.

Menurutnya, dia yang terkejut dengan penemuan haiwan itu menghubungi Jabatan Pertahanan Awam (JPAM) Sungai Siput untuk menangkap haiwan itu.

“Saya tidak pasti sama ada ia ular berikutan tubuhnya lembik seperti lintah. Malah, kulit haiwan itu agak kasar seperti kulit biawak.

“Ini kali pertama saya melihat haiwan pelik seumpama itu. Saya memang terkejut dan hairan bagaimana haiwan itu berada di dalam lubang yang digali,” katanya.

Sementara itu, Pegawai Angkatan dan Latihan Operasi JPAM Leftenan A Balasubramaniam berkata, tiga anggotanya dihantar ke lokasi kejadian untuk menangkap haiwan aneh itu.

Menurutnya, petugas JPAM turut terkejut berikutan tidak pernah berjumpa haiwan seumpama itu sebelum menangkap dan membawanya pulang ke pejabat JPAM, di sini.

“Kami sendiri pelik dengan haiwan itu berikutan ia tidak agresif sebaliknya mempunyai tubuh lembik dan menggerutu.

“Namun, akhirnya kami dimaklumkan ia sejenis ular air dipanggil ular guni buruk atau ular karung guni yang dikategorikan sebagai ular air tawar,” katanya.