"Behind every great man there is a great woman"........she makes you, or destroy you!

Hantu Laut

"Behind every great man there is a great woman"........she makes you, or destroy you!

Acrimonious Split Rattles Malaysian Premier’s Family

The announcement last week by top Malaysian banker Nazir Razak of his intention to file defamation charges against bloggers believed connected to a close friend of his brother, Prime Minister Najib Razak, has laid bare what has been whispered about for months in Kuala Lumpur.

There is a growing, acrimonious rift in the Razak family, much of it over the deeply indebted government-backed investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd, and Najib’s siblings’ relationship with the prime minister’s wife, Rosmah Mansor, partly because of her ostentatious flaunting of enormous wealth.  Rosmah, in addition to concerns about her behavior, is believed to have convinced her husband to initiate the 1MDB fund, which is backed by the Ministry of Finance.

One of the questions circulating in Malaysia’s business community is whether the family feud might result in problems for CIMB, the fast-growing Malaysia-headquartered bank that Nazir heads and which has become one of Southeast Asia’s leading financial institutions. Observers say CIMB owes at least some of its rapid growth to its connections to the family and hence to UMNO. “Its political connections are probably no longer a slam dunk asset for Nazir,” a business source with connections to the government told Asia Sentinel. 

“The brothers openly criticize Rosmah at dinner functions and family events,” a well-wired source told Asia Sentinel.  “I have heard them myself. Nazir’s family has moved to Oxford, where he spends 60 to 70 percent of his time. His elder brother Nizam spends time with his family in Boston. The two elder brothers Johari and Nazim also cannot get along with Rosmah.”

It was Nazim, according to two sworn declarations, one by a business associate of Rosmah and the other by the late private detective Perumal Balasubramaniam, who played a role in forcing Bala, as he was known, out of the country in 2008 after he issued an initial statement that Najib himself had been the lover of Altantuya Shaariibuu, a Mongolian woman murdered in 2006 in one of Malaysia’s most notorious killings and who was peripherally involved in a massive bribery case involving the sale of French submarines to Malaysia.  After Bala made the statement, he was told to get out of Malaysia and was given a hefty bribe to do so. Allegedly it was Nazim, a Kuala Lumpur architect, who took Balasubramaniam to the Hilton Hotel in Kuala Lumpur to write a statement recanting his version of the relationship between Altantuya and Najib. 

The acrimony is so bad that some of the family have spent their Hari Raya holiday – the celebration at the end of the fasting month – in Phuket and Singapore to avoid going to the prime minister’s obligatory open house, the source said.

Read more.

A truly great woman below:

One of the greatest woman of the 20th century, stood by her man, care for her poor people.

Is PM Najib In A Limbo And National Disaster In The Offing?

Hantu Laut

The United Nations defines a disaster as a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society. Disasters involve widespread human, material, economic or environmental impacts, which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.

Well, that's for natural disaster espoused by the UN. 

In the case of Malaysia, we have a man-made disaster in the making. We are heading for inter-racial, inter-religious conflicts, which may reach a flash point anytime now and serious economic melt-down if nothing concrete is done to salvage the worsening situation. 

When people have no confidence in government, frustration and discontent can and will disrupt peace and the economy.


It is time for him to get rid of his highly useless paid con -sultants and starts using his government servants as advisers, which should have been the case in the first place.

His 1Malaysia sale-pitch had become the butt of jokes.

He should stop wasting public funds to buy favours because it ain't working.His BRIM has more negative outflow than positive inflow.

His so-called sovereign vehicle 1MDB is going to be the biggest liability on the national economy.

Post-election support had dropped steeply amid growing calls for him to take action or make for the door and let a new leader takes over.

Is PM Najib in a limbo ?

From the Asia Sentinel:

One of Malaysia’s most respected polling organizations is expected to release figures over the next few days showing that support for the ruling Barisan Nasional from all three of the country’s major ethnic groups is dropping steeply, to the point where if an election were held today,  the national coalition would be buried in a landslide.

Read more.

UMNO Goes For The Status Quo

Malaysia’s party elections deliver a resounding – if pyrrhic – victory for the Prime Minister

Malaysia’s intraparty elections for the United Malays National Organization, which concluded over the weekend, have resulted in a resurrection of sorts for Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, who was all but given up as finished in the wake of the May 5 election debacle.

The party has been struggling with its identity since the election, in which the ruling Barisan Nasional lost the popular vote by a 50.87-47.38 percent split to the Pakatan Rakyat coalition headed by Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. The Barisan returned to the majority with a diminished 133 seats to the opposition’s 89 only because of gerrymandering. Najib was blamed for the debacle by party stalwarts including led by and egged on by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Nonetheless, within the party, Najib has emerged as the rejuvenated leader of a fractured party. His candidates for the party’s top seven slots – president, deputy president, three vice president, youth leader and women’s leader – all were returned to office, most by healthy margins, as were members of the party’s Supreme Council.

But the question is whether the decision by 145,000 of the party faithful to return them to office was a pyrrhic victory.

“UMNO has not changed. Money still talks,” said an embittered anti-Najib source who described himself as a 20-year member of the party. “Political corruption is rampant. These elections point to a party that is dying and could very well lose the next national elections.”

That was a reference to the fact that Najib’s forces appear to have poured vast amounts of money into buying votes at the district level to ensure that his candidates won. The vote-buying was termed a “golden storm” by party insiders, with votes going for as much as RM300 each.

Najib and his deputy, Muhyiddin Yassin, were unopposed in the party elections. However, an unofficial “Mahathir slate” developed for other positions. Particularly, Mahathir was pushing to make his son, Mukhriz, the 49-year-old chief minister of Kedah, one of the three vice presidents, which would have been viewed as a springboard to eventually go for the party presidency and premiership. Mukhriz finished fourth.

Party insiders say the danger is that the 88-year-old Mahathir could stage an all-out attack on Najib, as he did on Najib’s predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, after poor electoral results that cost the party its two-thirds majority in parliament in 2008. Already, a legion of bloggers aligned with Mahathir has been on a rampage against Najib. However, the betting is that since Mahathir has no allies in senior positions in the party, his ability to do much damage is probably limited. Such a move, however, obviously would exacerbate the schisms in the party that are already there.

Among the winners, the most significant included Khairy Jamaluddin, the son-in-law of former Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who has drawn close to Najib after previously being regarded as a pariah by much of the UMNO rank and file. Khairy was returned as head of the party’s youth wing despite the fact that he was the Mahathir’s particular bête noire.

Also returned to power was Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, who was forced to step down last year as a senator amid allegations that members of her family had looted the National Feedlot Corporation, a publicly funded project to rear cattle by halal, or Islamic religious methods.

Read more.http://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/umno-goes-for-status-quo/

Philippine Pork and its Many Bedfellow

Written by John Berthelsen and A. Lin Neumann

Pork no more The current scandal over patronage funds exposes deeper truths about the country's feudal ways The Philippines' multibillion dollar Pork Barrel, the center of a massive and growing scandal, is a river of money that enriches those most at its confluence but then flows down to mayors and other local political leaders, corrupting the democratic process as it goes, with a trickle eventually reaching impoverished voters in the form of favors and benefits intended to buy loyalty for the local congressman. The Pork Barrel, formally known as the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), provides each of the country's 24 senators with P200 million (US$4.8 million) per year, or P1.2 billion for an entire six-year term. Congressional representatives receive P70 million per year, or P210 million for their three year terms. For months, attention has been riveted on the activities of Janet Lim Napoles, who made herself and her family massively rich after she set up a series of phony NGOs that were the recipients of PDAF funds that were then apparently recycled back to the lawmakers in cash after Napoles took a 30 percent cut. That story has been told extensively and is the subject of an official government audit report; at least six senators and 28 congressmen could be liable for criminal charges. Mother's Milk  But the other part of the story is how these funds even when "properly" used perpetuate an almost unbreakable system, helping to create a long chain of political dynasties. In effect the PDAF has been a government-funded way to sustain a corrupt and feudal system. The way the funds are used illustrates the enormous difficulty of ending or reforming a system that makes a truism of the phrase that money is the mother's milk of politics. The funds were intended to finance rural development projects for constituents but investigations have shown that while many districts benefit from them, more often they are used as a method of delivering patronage and furthering the business interests of powerful local families. The poorly audited PDAF funds and other sources of money that flow down from lawmakers to district officials or mayors are sometimes used to fund outright illegal operations including smuggling of drugs or weapons and munitions sales, according to a former military officer, virtually unstoppable by an outmanned, outgunned and often corrupt customs service trying to police an archipelago of 7,100 islands, about 2,000 of which are inhabited.Read more.

Your Computer May Be Watching You

Written by Vanson Soo

MONDAY, 26 AUGUST 2013

No Cheeze Please

If you have ever got the feeling someone was watching you while you were using your computer, tablet or smartphone, it could be because someone is. You may well be sitting there while someone, somewhere out there, is commanding your electronic device to transmit pictures of you and what you are doing.

You might assume that if you haven't given electronic orders to the camera, it's shut off. But this might send a chill down your back. The friendly folks at the US's National Security Agency - the omnipresent spy agency dominating the news, and not in a good way - recently released a little two-page primer on tips to "harden" your computer against attacks.

One eye-catching bit of advice is to "Disable Integrated iSight and Sound Input" on Mac machines - the handbook was written explicitly for Mac devices but it is safe to assume the same applies to all built-in Webcams on other computers and devices.

"The best way to disable an integrated iSight camera is to have an Apple-certified technician remove it," according to the NSA Systems and Network Analysis Center. "Placing opaque tape over the camera is less secure but still helpful. A less persistent but still helpful method is to remove /System/Library/Quicktime/QuicktimeUSBVDCDigitizer.component , which will prevent some programs from accessing the camera."

And don't forget to mute or disable the internal microphone of these devices, the document says.

This comes as no surprise as anything with an Internet connection is vulnerable to attacks. The real surprise is that this advice came from the very agency now infamously known for conducting covert cyber-snooping and surveillance on ordinary citizens, as the former NSA contractor turned fugitive Edward Snowden has alleged.

But if even the NSA doesn't trust those Webcams, why should you? Irrational paranoia or cold reality?

The real issue is that most people have become thoroughly accustomed to these devices, it is indeed almost oxymoronic behavior to disable or give up on those innovations and gadgets supposedly designed to give us a modern digital lifestyle and to make us more efficient and put us abreast with the real world.

A hard pill to swallow? Consider this.

There are reportedly now special spy apps designed for smartphones. You don't have to be interested in them. You don't have to buy and install these apps. More importantly, you don't even need to know about them. Their very existence simply makes everyone highly vulnerable.

All it takes is for someone to install one of these apps on his/her phone and then covertly target another phone. The innocent victimized phone will then serve as a live broadcast for all the actions and conversations of the phone owner, or whoever was holding it or in proximity to that phone - who wouldn't even have the slightest clue as the compromised phone remains in rest mode in the midst of these intrusions.

The implications? Just imagine using the compromised phone in business meetings or say, on personal concerns, in the washroom - remember most smartphones these days come with front and rear cameras.

A client recently shared his concerns about these intrusive apps. But it is hard to give up the smartphone, he acknowledged.

The same good old words of wisdom: remove the SIM card and battery during important business meetings or private conversations. To go a step further, leave the phone outside the meeting room or inside a zip-loc plastic bag. Snowden was known to leave his phone inside the fridge, which works fine at home but isn't so convenient in a business setting. And what if the phone rang and you missed the calls?

The simple solution is to forward all calls to a spare old-fashioned mobile phone with a spare SIM card. Yes, those good old Nokias and the likes that are designed solely for phone calls and free of camera, internet connection, wi-fi, bluetooth, etc. Any phone but a smartphone.

So the choice is, give up the smartphone altogether or forward all calls to the spare phone, especially during those private, important conversations when you feel compelled to disable the smartphone. The forwarding function still works even when the smartphone is stripped of its SIM card and battery.

Now, it is fair to ask if the world has gone berserk. What is the point of buying sophisticated computers with all the digital add-ons and then disabling them? Using smartphones and reverting to old fashioned cellulars?

Well, just look at the Kremlin. The FSO, successor to the Russian KGB, announced last month a move to boost security of its communications and safeguard against cyber-snooping and NSA eavesdropping. The solution? Electronic typewriters.

Asia Sentinel: l

Malaysia's Biggest Opposition Party Under Threat

On May 5, the opposition Democratic Action Party became the second-largest political party in Malaysia, drubbing its main rival for Chinese affections, the Malaysian Chinese Association and taking 38 seats in Parliament. The election made the DAP, as the party is known, a powerhouse in Malaysian politics, with the legitimate claim to represent the country's Chinese, who make up 24.9 percent of the country's population.

Today, however, the 48-year-old DAP's status is in doubt amid allegations that the government, headed by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, has set out to put the party out of business in the wake of its electoral success. 

Malaysia's Registrar of Societies on Monday invalidated the party's Dec. 15, 2012 central executive committee election over alleged intraparty irregularities during its annual general meeting after two DAP members, the vice chairman and secretary of a local branch, lodged reports in January, saying the party's election results had been manipulated to exclude them. 

Tellingly, the Home Minister, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, announced the decision against the DAP rather than waiting for the Registry of Societies to deliver a formal letter. The letter was delivered Thursday, containing the directive to hold fresh party elections.

In any case, the party's executive committee has now been ruled illegal and a new election of executive committee members must be held within a specified period, probably 30 to 60 days, according to the registry. The party, however, is refusing to hold a new election, meaning the registry could put the party out of business. 

The facts appear up for grabs. Certainly the DAP appears to have made an embarrassing error in the election. 

"It's their own members who took out the complaints," said the head of a think tank in Kuala Lumpur. "It was a huge embarrassment to them during the election. This is registry of societies business, it has nothing to do with anybody. The DAP, as paranoid as they are, say they are under siege." 

The DAP strategist Chin Tong acknowledged in an interview that the party had erred in computing results of the election, but that it had rectified the mistake. In any case, it is questionable why the action is being taken now. Although the agency investigated the situation earlier this year and issued a letter that put the validity of the central executive committee in doubt, in the end it cleared the party for the general election. After first refusing to allow the DAP to use its "rocket" symbol on election materials, the registry relented and allowed its use.Read more.

Malaysia Worries Over a Crime Wave

Contract hits raise concern over rising street violence

Two contract-killing attempts - one successful - on Malaysian streets have focused attention and growing anger on perceptions of a worrying rise in violent crime in the country, turning it into a political issue between Malays and Chinese as well.

An alarmed Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak held a press conference to say the government is prepared to give the police whatever is needed to fight crime and expressed concern over the spate of killings, saying it affected public confidence and increased fear with regard to security and serious crime.

In the most spectacular incident, banker Hussain Ahmad Najadi, 75, the founder and head of Arab-Malaysian Development Bank, was gunned down along with his wife on the street as they walked to his car. Hussain was hit in the chest and lower abdomen and died on the spot while his wife was hit in the arm and leg. She survived the shooting.

The second shooting occurred on July 27 when a gunman riding pillion on a motorcycle pulled up next to a car occupied by R Sri Sanjeevan, the head of a local anti-crime organization called MyWatch, and shot him in the chest when the car stopped at a traffic light in a town in Negeri Sembilan state. Sanjeevan remains in critical but stable condition in a local hospital.

The two incidents are hardly similar. For instance, there is widespread conjecture that Hussain was killed over a land deal gone bad, and Sanjeevan had publicly said he had identified links between policemen and drug dealers, and that he intended to make them public, and unnamed forces on either side of that equation may have attempted to silence him.

However, the shootings tie in with the widening spread of violence including a series of contract killings, such as that in April of the Customs Department director general, Shaharuddin Ibrahim, who was shot dead at a traffic light while being driven to work. The department's highest-ranking uniformed official and one who is believed to have gone after illegal schemes, his death is the focus of a task force that so far has turned up no suspects.

Nor are those alone. The Penang Institute has identified 38 gun murders between January and April of 2013, a shocking figure for a country unused to such carnage. Two street killings took place last week in addition to the shootings of Hussain and Sanjeevan. Street murders by gun have been averaging two a week, according to statistics. A 26-year-old Indian with a criminal record was shot and killed on the street today, according to local news reports. Read more.

Reinvigorating Rural Malaysia

New Paradigms Needed

There has been a remarkable change in the composition of Malaysia’s rural-urban mix. In the 1980s approximately 70 percent was considered rural, where today 72 percent are urbanized and with the change taking place at about 2.4 percent annually.

It is a change that is taking place all over Asia, from China to India to Indonesia and more. Very few countries outside China have even attempted to cope, with the result that the rural-urban divide has grown and with very little being done to directly alleviate problems of poverty and rustication.

In Malaysia, rural sector development has been debated little, even though the primary sector still represents almost 12 percent of GDP and employs more than 11 percent of the population. Many rural issues affect the future in much greater magnitude than the rural contribution to GDP and employment. The sustainability of Malaysia as an eco(n)-system, the country's cultural basis, and even political destiny are tied up with rural evolution, with the vote in the kampung remaining a potent fiction if nothing else

In the meantime, deterioration continues in what was once one of the world’s most lush environmental green lungs. Forest cover is decreasing on a daily basis. Conservation has lost out to greed and development. Palm oil, rubber plantations and urban expansion are eating into the forests, with very poor land enforcement on the ground. Well-connected businesses get concessions that are extremely financially lucrative, at great environmental cost. Roads and new townships have divided rural habitats, playing havoc with biodiversity.

The precise needs of rural societies are best obtained from inside those communities. A "bottom up" problem identification process would ensure development objectives and implementation scenarios would remain relevant. Community shura (consultation) committees could be set up at the village level to identify and discuss needs, problems, and desired solutions, and advise village heads.

Such a democratic approach to community would provide policymakers with the guidance they need in setting objectives and programs, and assist in minimizing funding leakages during implementation. This measure alone would signal a very strong redistribution of policy decision-making to the communities themselves, empowering communities to have more say in deciding their own future destinies. The shura system should develop new leaders and champions who are willing to lead and help shape a new community sense of wisdom. Policies will never succeed without people to drive them.

Self-sufficiency and a vibrant local trade economy are the keys to future rural communities. However, rural SMEs should be facilitated to enter national and international markets. There are now many compliance procedures such as Good Agricultural Practice (GAP), necessary for agricultural produce to enter international supply chains. These practices need to be introduced within rural communities so products produced are accepted in international markets.

These compliance processes can be locally enhanced to include halal (Islamic compliance) certification, thus widening the compliance process to one inclusive certification, which would greatly enhance the desirability of Malaysian produce, especially within the exponentially growing halal markets worldwide.

Whole sectors like rice paddy production need to be reconfigured from the bottom up so they can become competitive. The paddy production process requires the hands of a number of contractors during field preparation, planting, cultivation, harvesting, and processing stages. Paddy production is an uncompetitive sector.

New methods like System of Rice Intensification (SRI) could be adopted, and more popular aromatic varieties of rice cultivated to increase industry viability. The rice monopoly held by the government regulator Bernas could be ended to allow new approaches to rice products and marketing by entrepreneurial individuals. Such an approach could drastically decrease production costs and add value to rice products, redistributing this added value back to farmers.

University and institutional research should change focus towards communities rather than using scare research funds to chase medals at exhibitions that have no research or commercial significance in places like Geneva and Seoul. The technology developed by Malaysian institutions should be simple, applicable to community enterprise, and appropriate to the size of the enterprises operating in rural areas.

This appropriate technology, if effective and viable is itself a source of competitive advantage that would enable rural enterprises to compete in the marketplace. Read more here.

Corruption's "Great White Shark"

Hantu Laut

Money the roots of all evil they say. 

Corruption in government is the scourge that besieged many countries that can lead to failure of the delivery system and hampers progress and development, the building of basic services and essential infrastructure. 

Can corruption makes a progressive country become regressive?

It can, depending on the degree and how widespread it is.

In some countries jobbery has become a way of life with politicians and high level officials actively and openly involved in corruptions.

You can't completely wipe out corruptions, at best even the best government can only help reduce it. 

Human greed is something difficult to control, not only greed for money, greed for power is equally contemptuous.

The opposition Pakatan Rakyat had won the popular votes riding on the waves of its anti-corruption battle cry.

Is Malaysia really that corrupted? 

Though, made to sound as evil and bad as could be by the opposition, corruptions in Malaysia are certainly not one of the worst in the world. We are no where near any of our neighbours, with the exception of the little dot south of the Peninsula.The squeaky clean city nation stood proudly tall in the corruption index, as clean as the Scandinavian countries.

Any form of corruption is bad and every government must adopt zero tolerance on corruption if it wants a progressive society.

The corruption  index by TI (Transparency International) of Asean countries is shown below.

Country                Ranking                 Score
____________________________________
Singapore                   4                           87
Malaysia                   54                           49
Thailand                   88                           37
Philippines              105                          34
Indonesia                118                           32
Vietnam                  123                           31
Burma                     172                           15  

Depending who you asked and from which perspective one look at it. The answers can be astonishingly divergent. 

Those in government and its supporters would not view it as corruption per se, but as part of the NEP to help the Malays/Bumiputras to raise their living standards and narrow the economic gap with the non-Malays. 

All said and done, this argument do not hold much water anymore as the system have been abused to enrich those in power, their families and their cronies. It has left a legacy of institutionalised corruptions.

We are looking forward to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's transformation policy and his promise of reducing  corruptions in government.

Read the "Great White Shark" corruption in Indonesia of a low ranking official, who has racked in hundreds of million in ill gotten gains.

Asia Sentinel

Low-ranking official running what appears to be a massive illegal conglomerate

Indonesia is so used to corruption that the steady parade of crooked lawmakers, policemen, generals, lawyers and others through the offices of the Corruption Eradication Commission and into jail hardly evokes a yawn.

But Adjutant First Inspector Labora Stores, a seemingly low-ranking cop in Papua, has pretty much stopped the country in its tracks. The Papua Police revealed that the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center, the government's anti-money laundering watchdog, had identified transactions amounting to Rp1.5 trillion (US$154 million) passing through Labora's bank accounts from 2007 to 2012.

Given his position at the sixth-lowest rank on the force, Labora earns a monthly salary of Rp8.5 million (US$870), or did until he was arrested last Saturday. He claims his wife, brother-in-law and children run PT Rotua, a timber company, and PT Seno Aid Vijay, a mining and fuel company.

Brig. Gen. Arief Sulistyanto, the National Police director for special and economic crimes, told reporters police had been investigating Labora since mid-March after seizing a boat in Sorong, a West Papua coastal city, that was carrying 400,000 liters of government-subsidized diesel. Labora was later identified as the owner of the craft.

In addition to his suspected fuel smuggling operation, Labora's wood processing business appeared to be thriving, partly by allegedly selling rare woods into China. Senior Cmdr. Setyo Budi Setyanto, the Papua Police director for special crimes, told reporters the force was also investigating Labora's alleged ownership of 115 containers of timber now being held at Surabaya's Tanjung Perak port. Read more.

Najib's Survival Cabinet

Asia Sentinel

Malaysian PM turns to old foe's allies for help

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has appointed what amounts to a survival cabinet, turning to allies of former foe Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to fend off intra-party challenges in the wake of the May 5 election, in which the opposition actually won the popular vote but was thwarted from taking power by gerrymandered constituencies.

Some of the appointments represent a sharp about-turn by Najib from the policies of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and the deputy prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, whom an outraged Mahathir is said to be attempting to goad into trying to push out Najib immediately as prime minister and head of the United Malays National Organization instead of waiting until the October party Annual General Assembly. Although the opposition has pointed to the appointments of Shahidan Kassim and Umno secretary-general Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor as indications of Mahathir's clout, the opposite seems to be true.Read more.

Walang Pilipinos: Hong Kong and Blatant Racism

Asia Sentinel

Appellate court denies permanent residency to domestic workers

The judges of Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal have surrendered to their own self interest in refusing the rights of foreign domestic workers to apply for permanent residence. 

The five judges ruled unanimously Monday against Philippines appellants Evangeline Banao Vallejos and Daniel Domingo, who argued that foreign domestic workers should have the same right to permanent Hong Kong residency as white-collar expatriates after working in the territory for seven years.

In a case which set natural justice and the simple, direct language of Hong Kong's Basic Law or mini-constitution, against political pressures, the judges could well also be accused of rank racism.

The government was threatening to take the case to Beijing's National People's Congress for an interpretation of the Basic Law should the judges rule against the government's insistence that the foreign domestic workers had no right even to apply for permanent residence, let alone to be granted it. So the bench, in unison, and in order to prevent the government undermining its authority, opted instead to undermine basic principle of justice.

They resorted to the typical lawyer trick of pretending that plain words did not actually mean what they said but something entirely different and supposedly in the minds of those who drafted the Basic Law two decades ago.

The law very simply states that anyone who has been ordinarily resident in Hong Kong for more than seven years has the right to apply for permanent residence. Whether they get it or not then depends on the degree of commitment to Hong Kong they can show. These tests have been very lenient and almost anyone with the seven year qualification could receive it. Indeed that remains the case with the assorted foreign bankers, chefs, forex traders and Pilates instructors etc who receive that right and thus can only be expelled for some heinous offense.

However, the word-twisting judges have deemed that somehow foreign domestic workers cannot be deemed "ordinarily resident" in Hong Kong, however long they live there, despite the fact that they are in regular employment and are only entitled to have holidays outside the territory for two weeks every two years. Anyone else can be outside Hong Kong for two months a year and still qualify.

The difference between the two categories of workers, domestic and all others, is not actually one of income or ability. It is primarily one of race. Thus the judges, all Chinese or Caucasians, deem all the domestic workers to be of a lower species of humanity. All of them are brown skinned people from other parts of Asia, mainly from Indonesia and Philippines plus a few from Sri Lanka, Thailand and India. Mainland Chinese are not allowed to become such workers because it would condemn them to this lower status and so would be unthinkable to the authorities.Read more.

Death Of A Thespian

Written by John Berthelsen

FRIDAY, 15 MARCH 2013

Private detective who tied prime minister to relationship with murdered woman has heart attack

Perumal Balasubramaniam, a former private detective who rocked Malaysia with allegations that Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak had had a sexual relationship with Altantuya Shaariibuu, a Mongolian beauty who was murdered in 2006 by two of Najib's bodyguards, died today of a heart attack.

Americk Siddhu, Balasubramaniam's lawyer, said the 53-year-old detective met with doctors this morning to determine whether he needed a coronary bypass operation, then returned to his home, where he suffered chest pains. He died in an ambulance on the way to a hospital, Siddhu said.

With national elections apparently just around the corner before June, Balasubramaniam has played a major role for the opposition, detailing his involvement in the case. Bala, as he was known, was a former policeman who was hired in 2006 by Abdul Razak Baginda, one of Najib's best friends and a defense analyst from the Malaysian Strategic Research Centre think-tank, to attempt to keep Altantuya away from Razak Baginda because he had jilted her. 

In a sworn statement issued in 2008, Bala alleged that the Mongolian beauty had first had an affair with Najib, who passed her on to Razak Baginda because Najib, then defense minister, didn't want to have a mistress around when he became prime minister. Najib succeeded Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in office in 2009.

Before she was killed, according to Bala's statement, she told him she, Razak Baginda and Najib had been together at a dinner in Paris during a transaction to buy French submarines for which Najib and Razak Baginda allegedly later were paid US$150 million in bribes. The statement contained excruciating and sensational details of the dead woman's sexual practices. Read more.

Asia Sentinel Apologised; Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar

Hantu Laut

An apology from Asia Sentinel:

On 12th March 2012, Asia Sentinel published an article entitled "Malaysia’s Securities Watchdog Head Quits" and with the sub-heading "Plagued by questions of conflict of interest, chairwoman steps down" in reference to the departure of Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar as chairman of the Securities Commission Malaysia.

It has since been pointed to Asia Sentinel that a number of the statements and allegations contained in the said Article are factually incorrect and misconceived.

Asia Sentinel now accepts the error in publishing the defamatory statements in the said articles and has removed it from the Asia Sentinel website. We withdraw all imputations and allegations upon Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar and thus upon the office which she then held as Chairman of the Securities Commission Malaysia with immediate effect.

Asia Sentinel expresses its deepest regrets for any and all distress and embarrassment caused by the publication of the defamatory words of and concerning Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar and to her husband, Azizan Abdul Rahman. Asia Sentinel also withdraws all imputations and aspersions cast upon Datuk Azizan Abdul Rahman on his personal and business reputation. Asia Sentinel further expresses its sincere and deepest regrets for any and all distress and embarrassment caused by the publication of the defamatory words and unequivocally and unreservedly apologizes.Read more.

Circumcision as a Weapon Against HIV

Concern is growing among health care professionals over the increasing trend against male circumcision, a practice that they say could avert more than 20 percent of new HIV infections by 2020, saving an estimated US$16.6 billion in future medical costs.

On May 7, 2012, a regional court in the western city of Cologne in Germany found that the circumcision of under-age boys for religious reasons was an unlawful act that caused bodily harm. Although the decision has no binding force on other courts, the decision has sparked uncertainty not only among health professionals but in Jewish and Muslim communities because male circumcision is a widely accepted religious rite.

Although the World Health Organization has estimated that some 665 million males aged 15 and older are circumcised, 70 percent of them Muslim, the numbers have been declining in many first-world states including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, although voluntary medical circumcision has been rising in South Africa, the epicenter of the HIV problem.

The practice of circumcision is undeniably painful since it involves moving the flap on skin on the head of the penis, perhaps the most sensitive part of the mail body. Arguments against the practice have been growing since the 1970s because of a belief that it causes psychological trauma that could affect the child later in life, and that the flap of skin is an important conductor of pleasure for uncircumcised men.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is supporting the wider use of circumcision its propagation and the World Health Organization is being urged to do the same, with critics arguing that any such campaign carries with it the real danger that societies in Africa, where the AIDS prevention efforts are mostly focused, will result in the large scale circumcising of infants who have no choice in the matter.

It should be noted that female circumcision has nothing to do with health. It is nothing more than the practice of female genital mutilation and is a gross insult to womanhood. It stems from male fears of women’s sexuality and usually involves cutting out the clitoris, which is enormously painful though milder versions which only involve trimming the labia may have no more effect on ability to be aroused than the male counterpart.

More than 40 observational studies among heterosexual men, however, show that circumcised men have about a 60 percent reduced risk of HIV compared to uncircumcised men. Three randomized controlled trials were conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa that showed circumcised men were at 60 percent less risk of HIV than uncircumcised men.

Thus the health benefits appear undeniable. “All these three trials were stopped by independent Data Safety Monitoring Boards as the effect was so strong and it was thought unethical to not offer circumcision to men in the control arm," had said Dr Helen Weiss, Reader in Epidemiology and International Health, The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in an exclusive interview to Citizen News Service (CNS) at AIDS Vaccine 2011. Read more.

Singaporeans Reawaken The Past

Singaporeans reawaken the "Marxist Conspiracy

Twenty-five years later, a handful of people seek to redress an old wrong

Last weekend, about 400 Singaporeans gathered in a local park to call attention to a notorious 25-year-old raid called Operation Spectrum, when Singapore’s Special Branch swooped down on 16 activists and community workers and charged them with being involved in a Marxist conspiracy to overthrow the government. Eventually six more were arrested, bringing the total to 22.

To this day, no one is really sure what it was about. The 22 were mostly young Catholics who were forced to “confess” on television such sins as sending books to China, which might have made a good deal more sense if instead they had been receiving books from China, which was then still a putatively Marxist dictatorship. The detainees didn’t fit any stereotypes as agitators, such as those who rattled the island republic during the decades of the 1950s and 1960s. They were actors, social workers, lawyers and students.

The fact that 400 Singaporeans could assemble in a public park to discuss the 25-year-old events and demand that the government do away with its harsh Internal Security Act without seeing their leaders carted off to jail may be an indication that despite the country’s reputation for draconian punishment for anyone contradicting the government, some things may have indeed changed.

The June 2 event was organized by the human rights NGO Maruah, which calls itself the focal point for the Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, a regional group with its secretariat based in Manila. Maruah appealed for 350,000 signatures to call for a commission of inquiry on whether there had been a Marxist conspiracy at all. Another group, Function 8, released a statement saying that “Nothing substantial or credible was ever produced to corroborate the government’s allegations. Later documents showed even greater ambiguity in the reasons behind the detentions in 1987. An injustice was perpetuated and continues to linger to this day.”

Many of the detainees have later alleged wrongful detention, ill treatment and torture.

There is considerable conjecture that then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew was concerned about the Catholic liberation theologists who had become active across South America and, in Asia, the Philippines in particular – priests demanding social justice and an end to poverty, and that he didn’t intend to see anything like that happen in Singapore. In court testimony in a libel suit – one of many that Lee would file against the press and particularly several against the now defunct Far Eastern Economic Review, the then-prime minister said his concern was to prevent a collision between the church and the government. He said he wanted to defuse the situation, which he felt was being aggravated by the actions of some priests in whipping up emotion through press statements and special masses for the detainees.Read more.

ICAC And UBS Say No Comment to Sabah Money Laundering Report

Hantu Laut

In an article carried by Asia Sentinel, the ICAC when asked to verify Sarawak Report's mass of transactions and documents on claim of Musa Aman misdeeds said "We would not comment on questions on operational matters."

UBS has responded in similar fashion in the article below.

But says its policy is to cooperate fully with authorities

The Swiss bank UBS, at the center of allegations of money laundering by Sabah’s chief minister Musa Aman, said it couldn’t comment on the claims although a spokesman for the bank said UBS is fully committed to assisting in the fight against money laundering.

“UBS does not comment on market speculation or rumor,” Mark Panday, a spokesman for the bank’s operations in Hong Kong, told Asia Sentinel. “However, in all markets in which it operates, UBS’s policy is to cooperate fully with regulators. Indeed, it is committed to assisting in the fight against money-laundering, including corruption and terrorist financing.”

The Sarawak Report, an NGO based in Kuching and London, alleged in a report made public Sunday that more than US$90 million was passed circuitously in 2007 by Sabah lawyer Richard Christopher Barnes from Musa into Barnes’ UBS Hong Kong account before it was forwarded in turn to a UBS Zurich account in the chief minister's own name.

The money transfers allegedly were shepherded by a UBS client manager named Denis Chua, who originally worked at the Singapore branch for HSBC Hong Kong until 2006. According to the report, Chua moved to UBS, taking the accounts with him.

The Sarawak Report said Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption discovered the transactions in an investigation into alleged money-laundering by a Musa associate, Michael Chia Tien Foh, and compiled a detailed list of the transactions between Barnes, Chia and the UBS accounts.

Denis Chua is believed to have left UBS. A call to the UBS Hong Kong office elicited no response. Panday declined any further comment on the matter.

Hong Kong’s money-laundering law, which appears to be focused mainly on drug trafficking, nonetheless make it an offense for bankers, lawyers or accountants to deal with property they know or have reasonable grounds to believe represents the proceeds of drug trafficking or other serious crimes. Offenders are subject to a maximum of 14 years in prison. Records must be kept on any transaction over HK$8,000, the rough equivalent of US$1,000.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s voluminous guidelines put the onus on banks and other financial institutions and their professional employees to ensure that companies follow legal guidelines on deposits. As required by the guidelines, banks make it a common practice to subject all employees dealing with the transfer of funds to regular, detailed briefings on money-laundering statutes and the penalties involved.

The need to guard against money laundering received new impetus in 2004 when the Hong Kong Monetary Authority urged banks to be especially alert to the possibility of money laundering as the territory prepared tReda moreo become an outlet for yuan-denominated deposits. In June of that year, the HKMA issued a supplement to the territory's anti-money laundering guidelines, setting out "Know-Your-Customer" principles, taking account of the requirements of a paper on "Customer Due Diligence for Banks" issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Read more

Cowgate Shahrizat's Continuation Baffles The Politicios

Malaysia's UMNO Keeps a Scandal-Plagued Pol
Asia Sentinel

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak apparently is having considerable trouble persuading Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, the minister for women, family and community development and the source of a controversy over alleged misuse of public funds, to quit the United Malays National Organization.

It was announced three weeks ago that Shahrizat, who also serves as the head of Wanita Umno, the women’s wing of the party, would step down from the ministry when her Senate* term ends on April 8 as a result of what has become known as the Cowgate scandal. Her husband, Mohamed Salleh Ismail, and other members of the family have been accused of misusing a major portion of a RM250 million soft loan from the government to establish the National Feedlot Corporation, to slaughter cattle under Islamic dietary rules.

Mohamed Salleh Ismail has been charged with criminal breach of trust and violating the Companies Act in relation to allegations of misuse of RM49 million of the funds given to the company. According to a report by Malaysia’s Auditor General, the money was steered into the purchase of things that had nothing to do with the project to slaughter 60,000 cattle annually. The Auditor General found that the project had never come remotely close to meeting its goals. Subsequent allegations have involved the purchase of condominiums in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, travel for the family, a Mercedes-Benz sedan for Shahrizat and other items.

Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad reportedly has repeatedly told party leaders Shahrizat must go, party insiders say, and her main protector, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, is also said to be backing away from supporting her.

“Dr M wants her out and his people have told me so,” a source told Asia Sentinel. “So does Muhyiddin who is distancing himself from her. So she is quite alone.”

However, political bloggers in Kuala Lumpur say Shahrizat apparently has demanded successfully that she stay as a member of parliament, and to keep her job as head of Wanita as well.

“It’s common knowledge that the PM doesn’t dare sacrifice Shahrizat or hold her accountable or even ask her to quit her Wanita post because he doesn’t dare take the chance of a revolt within Wanita Umno so close to the elections,” the source said. “Knowing Malaysian and Malay politics, I can see his dilemma.”

Shahrizat, the source continued, remains popular with the women’s wing of the party “and Wanita Umno are the biggest vote getters for Umno and Barisan Nasional. During campaigning, they are very effective, going house-to-house, using the soft touch to win hearts, giving away sarongs and gifts and so on. It’s easier for a woman to enter an opposition stronghold than for men and that’s where Wanita Umno’s usefulness is to Umno and the Barisan.”

Despite the fallout over the National Feedlot scandal, the current administration has tried to distance Shahrizat from the NFC, saying she was wasn’t involved with what her husband and children were doing. Read more.

Investigating Judges Named in Malaysia Submarine Graft Case

French case draws closer to Malaysian officials

Two magistrates have been nominated in Paris to investigate the politically explosive 2002 purchase of Scorpene submarines by the Malaysian Ministry of Defense when Najib Tun Razak was Defense Minister.

The case focuses on a 1.2 billion euro contract called a “programme soumalais” with the state-owned French defense giant DCNS, formerly known as DCN. The contract was later transferred to Armaris, a joint venture between DCNS and the French company Thales. In questioning in the Dewan Rakyat, the Malaysian Parliament, it transpired that a €114 million (US$150 million at current exchange rates) commission had been paid to a newly-minted company called Perimekar Sdn Bhd, nominally owned by the wife of one of Najib’s best friends, Abdul Razak Baginda, then the head of a Malaysian think-tank.

It is likely to take several years before the case comes to fruition. In the meantime Najib, now Malaysia’s prime minister and head of the United Malays National Organization, the country’s biggest political party, is preparing for snap elections, possibly in May or June, according to political observers in Kuala Lumpur.

At the heart of the story are allegations of a massive scandal involving not only Malaysian officials but top French politicians and arms purchases in Pakistan, Taiwan, India, Chile, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and other countries as DCNS geared up to sell naval equipment across the planet. The allegations include blackmail, kickbacks, a string of murders in Pakistan, Taiwan and Malaysia and involvement of such top figures as former French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur and others.

Other magistrates are handling different aspects of the affair. One, called “ l’affaire Karachi,” has raised suspicions of the involvement of the current French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who faces a difficult re-election campaign. Sarkozy has angrily denied any involvement. In that case, the deaths of 11 French engineers who were blown up in Karachi was first laid to a bomb set by Al Qaeda. However the bomb was later believed to have been set off by Pakistani military officials angered because the French had reneged on bribes promised by Balladur but cancelled by Jacques Chirac after he defeated Balladur for the presidency.

Judges investigating the affair have been probing whether Balladur received “retro commissions” or kickbacks for the contract. Balladur has given no credible explanation for 10 million French francs (€1.5 million) which found their way into his campaign coffers. Sarkozy was his campaign finance minister at the time.

In accordance with the French legal system, the Malaysia case has first been the subject of a preliminary survey from the financial division of the legal police. So the appointment of the two investigating judges, Serge Tournaire and Roger Le Loire, follows more than two years of investigation. The two are known for previous investigations on national and international corruption matters. They have broader powers to investigate independently and can call witnesses and conduct international surveys.

According to financial statements, the cost of the program was divided into four contracts:

• The contrat Scorpene, about €670 million, for two Scorpene submarines, built in France and Spain, and delivered in July 2009 and July 2010 ;
• The contrat Formation, signed in 2003, to train 156 submariners over four years.
• The contrat Ouessant for the rehabilitation of an Agosta-type submarine which has never seen service and is now a museum in Malaysia. The two together amount to 313 million euros/
• The contrat Malsout, provided logistics for the installation of Malaysian navy personnel, over 200 people located in Brest and Cherbourg, from December 2002.

The payment of bribes -- called commissions in this case – to foreign public officials as part of international contracts has been illegal in France since the ratification of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Convention on bribery of September 2000.

Since the beginning of the probe, bribes amounting to €32.5 million have been investigated, authorities say.

In other cases involving DCNS, particlarly the Karachi one, Nicholas Bazire, 54, the best man at Sarkozy’s wedding to supermodel Carla Bruni, was arrested and charged with misuse of public funds in Balladur’s 1995 presidential campaign. Another friend, Thierry Gaubert, Sarkozy’s cabinet chief when he was budget and communication minister, was arrested earlier.

Sarkozy is seeking avoid the appointment of an instruction judge in other aspects of the DCN case.. But the political knives may be out, especially if Sarkozy loses the presidential election.Having been named in the press in the Karachi case, observers in Paris say he could use the Malaysian case as a weapon against the Socialists. Currently his Socialist opponent, Francois* Hollande, leads him by 10 percentage points. The first round of voting is to be held in May.

The case also holds obvious political implications for Najib. A former DCN financial director, questioned in another case, alleged that the Malaysian case violated the OECD bribery convention. The Malaysian end of the episode has received widespread publicity, not just because of the €114 million commission paid to Razak Baginda’s company, but because of the gruesome murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu, a Mongolian translator and party girl, who was killed in 2006 by two of Najib’s bodyguards and whose body was blown up with military explosives in a patch of jungle outside Shah Alam. Read more.

So! Who Is Going To Bankrupt Malaysia?

Hantu Laut

There are dime a dozen of them out there, churning out the crudest and most ill-conceived writing against the government and its leaders.

Malaysia Chronicle, Malaysian Insider and the mother of all gutters Malaysiakini have plenty of these fierce moles crawling out of the molehills and for the first time see the light of day.

Some sould have been taken to the cleaners for libel but Malaysian politicians either have too many skeletons in the closet or think it's just not worth the effort.For some it's money matters.

If pro-government bloggers are paid than the same must be said of bloggers and writers supporting the opposition.

As Ahiruddin says which I agree "It's a total crap"

We don't need to be paid for our political beliefs.We don't need to be paid for our conscience.

How to support a group of political misfits that are full of contradictions?

Their latest contradiction is the unsound opposition to the government proposal to use RM1.5 billion of EPF funds to provide housing loans to the low income earners that do not qualify for bank financing.

All over the world in developed and developing countries the government are obligated to help the low income and the needy by providing such facilities as cheap loans or cheap home rentals.

In Britain, if you are less fortunate you are entitled to stay in a council house.In 1979 Britain introduced a right to buy legislation which allow the tenant to purchase the property.In Singapore, the HDB has been the most successful in housing its low income citizens.The government later introduced the HUDC for the middle income.Today, these properties have appreciated 5 to 10 folds its original prices.

The EPF has over RM400 billion investment portfolio and any of these investments can go wrong.

Making a mountain out of a molehill. RM1.5 billion is much less than 1% of the total portfolio.A drop in the ocean to help the poor to put roofs over their heads, a place they proudly can call home.

To this, the Oxford moron in the opposition, a lad called Tony Pua, one that is too smart for his own good, indignantly objected and sent wrong messages to the people to oppose the scheme.He said the scheme is against the EPF Act but failed to mention the particular act. Having read the Act myself it is clear what he claimed is untrue, there was no such contravention.The BOD of EPF has wide ranging powers to decide on any type of investments.This scheme is probably a much safer investment for EPF than shares and stocks as the amount is guaranteed by DBKL. Stocks can appreciate and depreciate in value.

There is no substance in his claim, it's pure political propaganda and a crock of shit.

EPF would not be giving direct loan to individuals.I presumed it would be through a new entity set up for this purpose, either own by EPF or DBKL.

On one hand he pretends to fight for the poor and on the other hand whack the poor and deny them of their rightful place in society.

Those of you, who want to vote for these kind of political misfits, better think twice.

They (Pakatan) have promised:

1.To lower the price of fuel by giving greater subsidies.

2.Bring down the price of foods and other essentials by giving greater subsidies.

3.To increase oil loyalty to 20% to Sabah and Sarawak.

4.To abolish highway tolls.........not sure how they are going to do it.They, either have to pay billion of ringgits to the toll concessionaires or just nationalise the whole damn thing without any payment of compensation.

There are many more on record that I need not mention here.

So! Now you tell me who is going to bankrupt Malaysia?

Malaysia's Anti-Opposition Bloggers

Does Kuala Lumpur have a home-grown version of China’s ’50-centers?’

Is Malaysia getting its own version of China’s so-called 50-centers, the legions of Chinese bloggers who monitor websites and reply to criticism of the government for money?

Ahiruddin Attan, the Kuala Lumpur-based pro-government blogger who writes under the name “Rocky’s Bru” says last September he pulled together friends to set up what he calls a small news portal called The Mole with the idea “to give certain balance to the reports of Malaysiakini, Malaysian Insider, Malaysia Today.”

In Ahiruddin’s view, “there are too many anti-establishment, anti-government sites in Malaysia.”

The Malaysian Insider reported last year that the government had provided US$10 million for the project. Other reports circulating in Malaysian political circles say the bloggers have been provided with US$10 million by the United Malaysia National Organization, the country’s biggest political party, and another US$10 million from the Malaysian billionaire Syed Mokhtar al Bukhary to follow the proliferating anti-establishment news organizations that are thronging Malaysia and state the government’s viewpoint.

But, Ahiruddin said in a telephone interview: “That US$10 million is totally crap. There is no truth at all in it. We are really small.” A former editor of a variety of UMNO publications including the Business Times, The Malay Mail and The Sunday Mail, he says he derives his current income from his continuing directorship at the Mail, a Kuala Lumpur-based daily tabloid. To reports that he had bought a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with his new-found wealth, he snorted. The Harley, he said, is 12 years old.

Despite Ahiruddin’s denials, other sources insist that at least 10 to 15 people are involved in the effort, with government support.

Because all of Malaysia’s mainstream media, including newspapers and television, are owned by its ruling political parties the country has generated perhaps the most vociferous opposition Internet news portals in the region, with some, including Malaysiakini and the Malaysian Insider, providing professional coverage of the government.

Although government officials grit their teeth over what the news portals publish, they have adhered to a pledge made by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad to leave the Internet censorship-free. Mahathir made the pledge in 1995 to promote the international development of his multi-media Super Corridor, which was designed to attract high-tech industry across the globe. In 1998, the government allowed Malaysiakini to begin operations.

The result, along with the proliferation of news sites, most of them anti-government, has been an explosion of readers who gather their news from the Internet. According to Freedom House, a whopping 55 percent of Malaysians had access to the Internet in 2011. And, the NGO said: “In the watershed elections of March 2008, the ruling National Front coalition lost its two-thirds majority for the first time since 1969. In addition, opposition parties won control of five of the country’s 13 states, including those with relatively high Internet penetration rates…Together with the growing popularity of independent online news outlets, the use of the Internet for political mobilization was widely perceived as contributing to the opposition’s electoral gains.” Read more.