The double win at Batu Sapi and Galas should not be reason enough for the Najib's administration to rush to the polls.There are still lots of ground work to do particularly in urban and semi-urban areas where the main oppositions are concentrated and where political awareness are far greater than the rural areas.
It is not yet a turning point to rejoice on these small windfalls not forgetting that the BN lost 9 out of 10 by-elections in Peninsula Malaysia and 1 out of 2 in Sarawak in spite of massive donations and promises of projects by Najib.
The opposition Pakatan Rakyat may look disarryed by the results of these two by-elections but support in urban and semi-urban areas are still something to be reckoned with.Diehard supporters hard to convince to change their minds that the BN has turned a new leaf.
The win at Galas and Batu Sapi are both unique and not so much that the BN has fully recovered but more the human factor and strategy employed by leaders given the task of heading the operation, namely Tungku Razaleigh and Musa Aman.Credit should be given to these two men for the astounding work, they are good political strategists.
Many self-styled political analysts had given Musa Aman little chance of winning the Batu Sapi by-elections, including some leaders, particularly in UMNO and LDP, secretly wishing Batu Sapi to fall to the opposition that would bring about the political demise of Musa Aman, which have been predicted umpteen times in the past in various political blogs and coffee-shop talks.He probably has a cat nine lives giving his detractors and those vying for his CM post severe indigestion.
He turned around the precarious state financial position and now having one of the largest financial reserves in spite of his detractors calling him a 'vacuum cleaner'.Obviously, he is a good vacuum cleaner, cleaning up the mess left by his predecessors.
Lest, they forget, he delivered almost all seats to BN in the 12th General Elections that saved the BN from becoming the opposition.Even then the political soothsayers predicted massive defeat in Sabah.
Unfortunately, princely Razaleigh was unable to do the same in Kelantan which showed his sphere of influence was only in his own constituency.It's rather strange that you thank one and not the other.
Najib has certainly done better than Pak Lah politically but is still a long way from being satisfactory to the rakyat overall.His only hope of retaining the rein of power is to make sure he doesn't lose big in Sabah and Sarawak.The situation in Peninsula Malaysia is expected to remain the same.
Galas and Batu Sapi, not by any note, that summer is on the way and Najib should not throw the baby and the bathwater out and call for snap elections.
He has already made one unnecessary mistake, probably on wrong advice of his people at the Finance Ministry, to include the 100-storey building (although to be built by GLC) and eco-resort in Karambunai, Sabah which has absolutely nothing to do with government budget as they were considered private sector projects.
The mistake brought him strong opposition and slide in popularity.To date, there were almost 240,000 against the idea on Facebook.
The Prime Minister needs to take note that many of them are voters and scattered all over the country.
The writing is on the wall and just a matter of time before Zaid becomes one of the many victims of Anwar's insatiable greed to keep control of PKR by his family and cronies.He has refused to be de jure leader of PKR, instead, allowing his wife to hold the post but he literally control her and the party as de facto leader.
It was a clear signal to Zaid Ibrahim that Anwar Ibrahim finds him a threat to the leadership.By hook or by crook Zaid must be stopped or his next stop would be the presidency.
Zaid quits the No.2 race and all his posts in PKR quoting blatant cheating in the voting process for the No.2 post condoned by the leadership.
Becoming deputy president is one step nearer to becoming the president which Zaid would definitely succeed if he had won the post of deputy.His meteoric rise in the PKR hierarchy gave Anwar bone chilling shivers.The voting trend showed that Zaid is likely to win the contest that would displace Anwar's blue-eyed boy Azmin Ali.
My advice to Zaid Ibrahim is not to waste his time in PKR but to form his own party.He would be able to pull many PKR members who are disillusioned with Anwar's leadership.The voting trend is strong indication that PKR members are fed up with Anwar and Azmin Ali's political charade.
Democracy is not in his dictionary.A demagogue that many young Malaysians would want to make the prime minister of this country.Can you imagine what he would do once he sat in Putrajaya?
U.N. Human Rights Council Takes Aim at New Target: United States
By George Russell
Published November 05, 2010 | FoxNews.com
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The United Nations Human Rights Council, a conclave of 47 nations that includes such notorious human rights violators as China, Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia, met in Geneva on Friday, to question the United States about its human rights failings.
It heard, among other things, that the U.S. discriminates against Muslims, that its police are barbaric and that it has been holding political prisoners behind bars for years.
Russia urged the U.S. to abolish the death penalty. Cuba and Iran called on Washington to close Guantanamo prison and investigate alleged torture by its troops abroad. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, told the U.S. it must better promote religious tolerance. Mexico complained that racial profiling had become a common practice in some U.S. states.
Some of these allegations, and many more, come from Americans themselves — especially from a stridently critical network of U.S. organizations whose input dominates the U.N. digest of submissions from “civil society” that are part of the council’s background reading.
For the first time ever, the U.S. came under the Human Rights Council’s microscope as part of the its centerpiece activity, the “Universal Periodic Review,” a rotating examination of the human rights failings and strong points of every country in the world, from North Korea to Norway, by the council's members.
For two hours, council members got to say whatever they wish, good and ill, about the country that has done the most in the past 40 years to establish human rights as a global theme.
The anticipation was that that ill-wishers were planning to pack the line to the speaker’s podium, with complaints from some Western human rights organizations that Cuba, Venezuela and Iran were seeking to “hijack” the microphone and stack the speaker’s list with U.S. critics. And it appears to some extent they did.
But what really is under review is the gamble by the Obama administration to join the council in the first place, rather than shun it in disdain, as the Bush administration did, along with its predecessor, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, because of its roster of despotic members and unbridled antagonism toward Israel.
The Universal Periodic Review, in which all countries great and small submit to human rights commentary by their peers, is supposed to help install the principle of observing human rights in the farthest reaches of the international community.
But it is also showing signs of becoming, in the U.S. case, a one-sided fiasco, along the lines of such previous toxic human rights extravaganzas as the U.N.’s 2001 “World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,” and its 2006 follow-up, which turned into orgies of anti-Israeli posturing and helped to lead to the previous U.N. Human Rights Commission crackup.
So who is supposed to benefit from the U.S. submission to the UPR process?
According to Jim Kelly, director of international affairs for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and founder of a blog called Global Governance Watch, the main beneficiaries are likely to be the interest groups that take part in the exercise. “The fact is, they are demanding that the U.S. comply with rights that are already addressed by our own democratic system and laws,” he argues. “They are simply trying to get us to adopt U.N. standards instead of our own. It’s not as if by our participating in the human rights process Cuba is going to clean up its act.”
But according to the U.S. State Department, which led a delegation of high-level American diplomats and government officials to Geneva, the Periodic Review is a major opportunity for Washington to lead the rest of the world by example.
“Our taking the process seriously contributes to the universality” of the human rights process, one State Department official told Fox News. “It’s an important opportunity for us to showcase our willingness to expose ourselves in a transparent way” to human rights criticism.
“For us, upholding the process is very important.”
The same official, however, declared that the “most important” part of the process is “the dialogue with our own citizens.”
That was a reference to the important—and often harshly critical—role being played in the U.S. Universal Periodical Review by American human rights interest groups, or Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), also known in U.N. parlance as “stakeholders.”
The Obama administration has gone to elaborate lengths to consult with such groups in advance of the Geneva meeting. The State Department, has led delegations from a variety of government departments (including Labor, Homeland Security, Education and Justice) to consult with such groups in Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Harlem, and Albuquerque, according to an official at State.
Those NGOs will also get a chance to “engage” with the U.S. delegation in Geneva at what the State Department calls a “first ever town hall meeting,” after the Human Rights Council, composed of national governments, makes its views known. “Many countries stack the room with NGOs that are government controlled,” the State Department official told Fox News, adding that the U.S. obviously doesn’t.
“We hope that the Periodic Review process will be one that sheds new light on issues,” the official added, including “what we learn from our own NGOs, which we take seriously.”
How seriously the NGOs should be taken is indeed, an important part of the question surrounding the human rights tableau in Geneva. For one thing, 103 submissions by those NGOS about U.S. human rights practices—very broadly defined—are already included in the official documentation of the Universal Periodic Review itself.
In that sense, their contents provide a kind of rough road map to the rhetoric that the U.S. may face in the days—and even years—ahead, because the Universal Periodic Review process will be repeated indefinitely into the future, and is supposed to analyze progress from session to session.
According to a dense summary of the submissions circulated by the U.N. in advance of Friday's meeting, the NGOs offering briefs for this Review run a familiar gamut from the American Bar Association and British-based Amnesty International to such specialized groups as the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission.
They also include an array of submissions from college legal faculties and their advocacy offshoots; environmental coalitions; and a smattering of other non-American organizations such as the Federation of Cuban Women, based in the Castro dictatorship. (The women’s group objects on human rights grounds to the U.S. embargo against Cuba.)
Even relatively conservative and centrist organizations are represented in submissions by the Heritage Foundation, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, and the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty.Read more.
