Who In Batu Sapi ?

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What's in store for the Batu Sapi by-election?

In all likelihood, it would be a three-cornered fight as SAPP and Pakatan Rakyat would want to prove their political prowess to gauge their popularity for the next general elections. Both are unlikely to give way to each other.

This dichotomy would continue until the 13th General Elections which is expected to be called before the term expired.

It would give the BN the edge if a right candidate is chosen.

SAPP's Yong Teck Lee suspension has ended and he is now eligible to stand in an election.Yong is unlikely to stand in this by-election but would field a candidate from his party. Karamunting central liaision committee member Poon Kee Yang sits top of the list.

Yong would not stand as the support for the opposition in this area is still unclear and if he stood as candidate and lost than his party would suffer the consequence in the next general elections.Batu Sapi has 60 % bumiputera voters.

As usual, PKR is troubled by infighting among who should be selected as candidate.The contenders are, its Batu Sapi division chief Hasnar Ibrahim,Tuaran PKR division chief Ansari Abdullah and Sabah PKR chief Thamrin Jaini.

Hasnar Ibrahim is most likely to rock the boat if not selected and PKR leaderships are in a quandary as to him or Thamrin Jaini. Hasnar is a local and has affinity with the bumiputra community.He is an ex ISA detainee and has track record of dirty underhand tactics.The leadership may decide on Thamrin which will send Hasnar and his followers to rebel against the party.

The BN may field the spouse of the late Edmund Chong to attract sympathy votes.

The fight really would be between BN and SAPP.

Budget 2011, Will Crony Capitalism Be Alive And Kicking ?

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While I yearn for a better Malaysia where the gap between the rich and poor would narrow down to a civilised level I just could not comprehend the logic of a 100-storey tower that could help us jump start an economic miracle to becoming a high income nation.

We need to grow an average 8-10 percent annually for the next 10 years to ever come near that dream.

Can we?

Which economic formula is the Prime Minister using? Adam Smith's "invisible hand", John Keynes principal of government intervention or Milton Friedman's free market economy and government non-intervention,, or all pleated into one.

All three are acceptable economic principles that have been used over the century in varying degree.

However, the global financial crisis in 2007 has brought the resurgence of Keynesian economics.

Though, government intervention advocated mostly legislative in nature, fiscal and monetary measures are needed to mitigate adverse effect of economic recessions.In severe cases where the private sector had become incapacitated such scenario occasioned the use of government funds to save the economy.The Western economies are still reeling from the effect of the private sector's bad financial governance.

The 2007 global financial crisis that led the US and other Western economies to bail out failed financial institutions by taking up equity and management of these companies was one such occasion.It helped to decelerate economic meltdown and brought speedy recovery to the economy.

The building of mega structures for prestige rather than economic considerations will not excite the economy as much as if the money is spent on increasing industrial outputs.

Putrajaya is the ultimate white elephant and we don't need anymore of such monument to strain our financial resources.Too often, we have mega-failure projects like the PKFZ and Bakun Dam which punch big holes in government finances and disgrace to the nation.

Ours is a nation that survived on our trading capabilities and have to reckon with countries like Thailand,Vietnam,Indonesia and big player China in the world markets.These are sectors that needed to be boosted. China would eventually become a big economic threat to smaller nations in this region.

Letting the private sector to take the lead is well and good as long as the government stop crony capitalism which has been the practice all these times.It leads to inefficiency and cost ineffectiveness to the system.

Letting those who knows the business best do the job is the only way to bring competitiveness to the industry.In the past almost all government projects,special licences,approved permits had to go through UMNO linked middlemen who sat on their arses and do only Ali Baba business to collect huge windfall from the project.

The government should wake up to reality and be bold enough to correct mistakes of the past.

Malaysia has probably one of the worse practices of trade monopoly in a free market economy. These are given to either GLCs or cronies.The breaking up of these monopolies should be given priority to liberalise the market so prices can find its own level.

Bigger chunk of our annual budget goes to recurring expenditure, literally, to take care of the grossly over-staffed and inefficient civil service.We have over 1 million civil servants to take care of 26 million Malaysians while the UK had only around 500,000 against a population of 61 million.

It's a reflection of bad policy of the government of creating jobs just to give employment to the majority bumiputras. When the oil wells run dry this country will be bankrupted by none other than the civil service.It's about time the government starts trimming the civil service down to less shameful level.

In Budget 2011, Sabah and Sarawak would probably be the biggest losers getting only a meagre RM10 billion in projects or just 8 percent of total value of projects mentioned in the budget.Despite Sabah and Sarawak contributions to the total government revenue the two states stayed neglected and may lose its premium as fixed deposit states.

Why is it that most development should be in Kuala Lumpur, which is already a burgeoning city with highly developed infrastructures and a dysfunctional traffic system that clog the city roads and streets despite billion of ringgits spent? More mega buildings and construction of the mass transit would be a major nightmare for the city dwellers.

More money should be channelled to Sabah and Sarawak for infrastructure development.The two states with land masses over three times more than that of Peninsula Malaysia still remained backward because of neglect and inequitable distribution of development expenditure.

Obviously, the government is only interested in monumental and cosmetic economic reforms which is not going to help up the value chain and make Malaysia high income nation in the near future.

I don't see it as an exciting budget but more likely acts in furtherance of existing crony capitalism.

Najib needs to do more.He took over a weak administration and party members who are used to the spoils system.

Will PAS Be The Next Powers That Be?

How Malaysia's right-wing Islamist party became the country's best hope for political reform.

BY DUSTIN ROASA |

On Dec. 31 of last year, a Catholic newspaper with a circulation of less than 15,000 found itself at the heart of a major controversy in Malaysia. In 2007, the government had ordered the Kuala Lumpur-based Herald to stop using "Allah" to refer to a non-Islamic God, as the paper -- located in a majority-Muslim country -- had been doing for years. The paper sued, and when the case finally made its way to the High Court, a judge sided with the Herald and overturned the ban.

Protests followed immediately, with masked men on motorbikes firebombing several churches and demonstrators taking to the streets. Tension between the country's Muslim Malay majority and its Chinese and Indian minorities was already at a low boil, thanks to Malaysia's ruling coalition and its dominant political party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). Through policies such as pro-Malay affirmative action, the government had attempted to exploit the country's ethnic divisions in order to deflect attention from its economic mismanagement and corruption.

But as Muslim anger with the Allah case boiled over, an unlikely ally came to the paper's defense: Malaysia's opposition Islamist party, the Pan-Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS). PAS President Abdul Hadi bin Awang (above) publicly supported the paper's right to use the word. "PAS would like to state that, based on Islamic principles, the use of the word Allah by the people of Abrahamic faiths such as Christianity and Judaism is acceptable," he said.

It was an odd turn for Malaysia's competing political parties: The ostensibly secular UMNO was stoking Muslim outrage, while PAS, which was founded half a century ago with the stated goal of transforming Malaysia into an Islamic state guided by the Quran, was calling for interfaith understanding. Yet it fit an emerging pattern. In the last five years, PAS has been moderating its onetime deeply conservative stance in order to reach out to non-Muslim Indian and Chinese voters, who account for nearly a third of the population.

The tactics have paid off. PAS has attracted more than 20,000 non-Muslim members, astonishing for a country where political parties are strictly divided along ethnic and religious lines. The support helped the party, along with its partners in the opposition People's Pact coalition, win an historic one-third of parliamentary seats in the 2008 national election, denying the UMNO a two-thirds majority for the first time since Malaysia's independence in 1957. Many Malaysian political observers are predicting that the opposition will finally wrest power from the UMNO-led ruling coalition in the next election, due by 2013.

But that victory is contingent on PAS's ability to perform a delicate balancing act. The party must convince its Muslim base that it is not abandoning its religious principles while quelling fears among non-Muslims that it is a radical party bent on scrapping Malaysia's secular constitution.

"I've always looked at the Islamic basis of the party as inclusive in nature," Khalid Samad, a PAS reformer and member of parliament, told me recently. "The party is for the benefit of all, not just Muslims." I had traveled to Kuala Lumpur's predominantly Indian neighborhood of Brickfields to have lunch at a local hotel restaurant with Khalid and Hu Pang Chau, the Chinese head of the non-Muslim wing of PAS. The two men are a driving force behind PAS's recent transformation, the second major shift in the party's history.

Originally a branch of UMNO, PAS broke away as an independent party in 1955 as a challenge UMNO's secularism. It was the first Islamist party in Southeast Asia -- and one of the first in the world -- to come to power through elections, winning more than a dozen parliamentary seats and control of two state governments in Malaysia's first election after independence. But while PAS officially supported the establishment of an Islamic state, in its early years it did so only vaguely, preferring instead to emphasize Malay identity over religion.

Then came the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which convinced Muslims around the world -- including Khalid, who at the time was studying in Britain alongside Muslim peers from the Middle East and India -- that Islam could be a political force. Following the Iranian example, PAS replaced its professional leaders with ulama, or religious scholars. By the early 1980s, the party was openly calling for an Islamic Malaysia.

The agenda sat poorly with UMNO's Mohamad bin Mahathir, who won election as prime minister in 1981 and proceeded to rule for 22 years. Mahathir was openly contemptuous of PAS and often had its members -- including Khalid -- arrested under Malaysia's Internal Security Act. At the same time, he worked to co-opt the Muslim vote, in part by enlisting popular Islamic activists to help the party. The tactics had the effect of pushing PAS further to the right in an effort to distinguish itself from the ruling party. By the early 2000s the party was once again aggressively touting its Islamist credentials.

By the 2004 parliamentary election, however, PAS's piety had become a political liability. Mahathir had stepped down as prime minister, but PAS was ill-placed to fill the vacuum he left behind; Malaysia's moderate Muslims and non-Muslims had come to embrace the progressive, development-focused Islam touted by Mahathir's replacement, Abdullah Badawi. The party took a drubbing at the polls that year, winning only seven seats.

After some soul searching, the PAS leadership attributed the poor showing to its overtly Islamist stance and failure to attract young and non-Muslim voters. "Most non-Muslims, especially those in the Chinese community, would tell you that PAS are fundamentalists and extremists," Hu told me over lunch, as we looked out over a tangle of high-rise construction sites in Brickfields. "If you support PAS, everyone will have to convert to Islam and give up speaking their mother tongue." PAS's political niche sat awkwardly with the multiculturalism of modern Malaysia: "If you are interested in governing a nation that only has mosques and doesn't have temples or pig farms or alcohol, then you are restricting yourself to governing Mecca or Medina," Khalid said, to booming laughs from Hu.Continue reading.

Are They Unionists Or Politicians?

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I am all for minimum wage and have , in the past, written on the urgent need for the government to implement it.

For many years Malaysians workers have been exploited by employers including GLCs who racked in million of profit but gave two hoots about the welfare of workers.It was also the cause of low productivity in the country.You get what you pay.

With the government recent announcement, naturally, the unionists should be happy and the bosses unhappy.

Well, read these statements made by some union leaders on the government proposal to introduce minimum wage. Some, just too smart for their own good.The cryptologists. Reading between the lines.Making foolish statements all for the sake of publicity.

Are they really union leaders or opposition politicians?

I believe the Prime Minister is sincere but, as usual, monkeyed unionist backed by no thank you oppositions were quick to make political capital out of it. They speculate in all kinds of assumptions and premonitions to seek cheap publicity.

“I hope that this is not a political agenda for their own end. The credit should not go to BN but the workers and especially the MTUC who has been struggling for minimum wage. Don’t politicise this issue, it is their responsibility,” said Sivanandan.

Come on! Mr Sivanandan, who should take the credit, YOU? MTUC?

You all are just a bunch of useless big talkers.If you can't get the government to agree with your proposal for donkey's years what that makes you?

All government has political agenda to keep themselves in office, if they don't, than they must be stupid.

Unlike the unions, all talk but no action.

Who is seeking publicity here the idiotic unionists or the government?