Dissolve The Royal Commission

Hantu Laut

Environmentalists all over the world including the UN, WWF and many others lauded the government decision to scrap the coal power plant in Sabah.The oppositions have their own stories.

Instead of lauding the State and Federal government they think the smart thing to do is to ridicule the decision, which actually make them looking more stupid.

DAP's MP for Kota Kinabalu Hiew King Cheu said it was an election ploy while another political donkey Jeffrey Kitingan said it could be temporary and likely to be reinstated after the general elections.

Across the South China Sea in Tanah Melayu the oppositions made a mockery of the Royal Commission by urging the Teoh's family to withdraw from the hearing.

PM Najib has gone out of his way to appease the family by appointing the Royal Commission and the opposition is using delaying tactic in the hope of using the controversial issue as a battle cry for the general elections expected anytime soon.

Than there is the sodomy case of Anwar Ibrahim using the same delaying tactic for political mileage.Delayed many times without probable cause. The judge should not be intimidated and should proceed with the case to its finality.

The PM should give the family of Teoh an ultimatum, participate or the government will dissolve the Royal Commission.

The opposition's ploys are wasting court's time and taxpayers money .

We have had enough of this unpalatable circus.

With oppositions like this who needs a new government.

Ragtag And Bobtail

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There must be jinx in Sabah PKR or just the idiosyncrasy of the leadership that most Sabahans could not stomach.

Thoughtless and unkind remarks seemingly peculiar with people from the other side can be very upsetting to the generally affable Sabahans. We have no chips on our shoulders!

PKR leaders, not even yet in power, were already worse than UMNO leaders when it comes to dealing with Sabahans.They just couldn't get their act together.They already have the who's master and who's servant mentality much to the agony of Sabahans.

Choosing the party chief in Sabah could just be a simple democratic process, let the divisions elect their chief without any interference from the Peninsula.Unfortunately, masters want none of this, they want someone they can control.

The case of Pajudin Nordin clearly showed that Anwar and now his wife have no principle whatsoever. Instead of defending their decision and the person they have appointed they submit to the rumbling on the ground and simply removed the person they appointed in the first place.

More trouble in Sabah PKR here.

Maybe, Zaid Ibrahim's Kita or Raja Petra's MCLM should come and fill the void in the Sabah opposition front.

Zaid hasn't got the stamina yet.MCLM, is a good idea of a third force, but there is a serious hitch, RPK is running his political oufit by remote control which will suffer broken radio wavelength from time to time and getting the right candidate might pose a problem.



So! Who is this Haris Ibrahim?

Other than being a blogger and a lawyer his background is misty.Not all lawyers make smart politician and not all lawyers are smart.

At present, the oppositions in Sabah and Sarawak are 'ragtag and bobtail'.

Only DAP has better chance to grap a few seats.

The oppositions, lots of talks but fragmented and discordant.

Looks like Putrajaya stays an elusive dream in the oppositions' camp.

Don't Come The Raw Prawn With Me, Mate!

Hantu Laut

I thought only pro-UMNO Malaysian Instinct is run by a bunch of grisly critters who can't separate the wheat from the chaff.

Obviously, they exist on both sides of the political divide.

Read here analysis of the Batu Sapi by-election result by a mathematical genius.

BN spent RM80 million just to get 620 extra votes.Obviously, the writer is wallowing in his own intelligence.

"Don't come the raw prawn with me, mate!" the man from "Down Under" would have told him.

Candle Light Vigils With A Flaw

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The group against the ISA organise regular show of their anti ISA stand by having what they called candle light vigil in various locations in Peninsula Malaysia.

What they intend to achieve by this regular maniacal show of solidarity against the ISA is hard to tell.It's almost like banging your head against a brick wall trying to push an issue against a government that only aren't listening but reacted with negative responses.

I am not against the anti ISA vigils.That's not really the issue I am concerned with.It's fine if they confine the vigils only to adults.It's the children. I can see in many of those vigils the presence of children as young as 3-4 years old.Both organisers and parents should be taken to task for exposing their children to this kind of dangerous culture. They knew fully well they are breaking the law and knowing our police force who do not take kindly to illegal assembly those children could get hurt or got lost in a melee.

If those parents brought their children to use them as instruments of compassion so the police wouldn't arrest them because of the children than there is something seriously wrong with them.Those children should be at home in bed not out in the streets late at night to participate in political activities of their parents.

Those in Hindraf had also shown similar irresponsible behaviour by using children to write letters,messages and sent flowers to meet the Prime Minister to appeal for the release of the Hindraf detainees.Aren't those children too young to be used in a political struggle.

Those who organised the candle light vigils and those parents actively involved should open their conscience and think hard whether those children should be there in the first place and whether they should ignore the potential dangers they are putting those children into.

Haste Makes Waste

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Tengku Razaleigh revelation that a component party of BN might be leaving the coalition before the end of this month have many people guessing.It may not be too difficult to identify the party concerned .

Speculation is rife that the SAPP may be the party that is going to ditch the BN due to unhappiness of its President Yong Teck Lee with Abdullah Badawi's inaction to the grouses of Sabahans on the thorny issues of illegal immigrants, cooking oil subsidy and hosts of other problems effecting the state.

Was Yong's concern for Sabah sincere or it is just an excuse to 'tukoran bankad' (changing shirt) to fulfill his own personal agenda?

SAPP is not the sole Chinese-based party in Sabah and Yong couldn't claim to represent the whole Chinese community in the state. LDP, another Chinese-based party formerly headed by Chong Kah Kiat has 3 state seats and 1 parliamentary seat.Peninsula-based MCA holds another state seat.

Yong's rumbling of discontent for the past few weeks and his ultimatum to Abdullah to resolve the issues by August is seen as a precursor to SAPP leaving the BN and stimulus for Anwar to launch his machinery to take over the federal government through a vote of no confidence against Abdullah which at this moment look impotent unless there is a big exodus of lawmakers from Sabah and Sarawak or the Peninsula joining Pakatan Rakyat.

Abdullah imperious treatment of Sabah and Sarawak after the 8th March General Elections has transformed the massive support for the BN into anger and disillusionment for the people of the two states, Sabah in particular because of its excellent contribution to the victory of BN.

This would be the second time Yong parted ways from political expediency. In 1994 he defected from PBS to form SAPP which was later accepted into the BN.

Would Yong and SAPP join Anwar or would he goes into political oblivion if Anwar failed to secure the federal government?

For a minuscule party like the SAPP pointing gun at the Prime Minister's head may not be a wise move.

Hantu Laut

Michael Backman is a well-known and respected business and political writer in this region and elsewhere.He regularly writes for the Age, an Australian newspaper and have written many articles on politics in Malaysia.

I produce below a recent article on Malaysian politics.

Malaysia needs a strong Opposition

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Yes, no, maybe? Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has called elections for March 8.

Michael Backman

• February 27, 2008
• Page 1 of 2

SHOULD Malaysians bother to vote? The corollary of this question is: does the Malaysian Government deserve to be re-elected? The answer to the second question is no.

In the past few years, the Malaysian Government has presided over an extraordinary number of scandals that are appalling by any standards: the trade minister's allocation of car import permits to friends, relatives and supporters; the billion-dollar fraud at the Port Klang Free Trade Zone; the outrageous and much-flaunted wealth of ruling party politician Zakaria Md Deros; the claims that a High Court judge allowed the lawyer representing a rich businessman to write for him his judgement in a defamation lawsuit; an immensely rich chief minister in Sarawak state who is allowed to rule as if it were his; and so on.

The Malaysian Government richly deserves to pay for all of this at the ballot box.

So the next question is: should the Malaysian Opposition be elected to office? Again, the answer is no.

The Opposition is a shambolic assortment of the disaffected rather than a competent, alternative government. In no way is it ready to govern.

All these questions are pertinent because Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has called elections for March 8.

Elections are fought tenaciously in Malaysia as if the South-East Asian country is a fully fledged democracy. But it isn't. It is democratic in that elections are held, but they are not fair. The ruling coalition has been in power in one form or another since independence 50 years ago. One reason for this longevity is that there are legal and institutional biases that favour the Government.

Malaysian electorates are severely malapportioned. The smallest electorates are rural; the largest are metropolitan. The largest have about six times the number of registered voters as the smallest. This means that the votes of those in the smallest seats count for many times those in the larger seats.

This sort of bias meant, for example, that in the last general elections held in 2004, the ruling coalition won 198 or 91% of the parliamentary seats with just 64% of the votes cast. The Opposition won only 21 seats or 9.6% of the seats compared with 36% of the popular vote.

Had the Parliament reflected voters' actual voting intentions, there would have been 79 rather than 21 Opposition members elected. Read more.....