PKR slams BN for treating Sabah, Sarawak unfairly

 

Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) claimed the federal government has once again proven its unfair attitude towards Sabah and Sarawak by not giving the two states due representation in the new federal cabinet.

PKR Vice President Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan said Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has forgotten that it was Sabah and Sarawak that saved the Barisan Nasional in the recently concluded general elections.

“Abdullah should have appreciated this life-saving contribution by giving the Sabah MPs more important roles in the federal government. Instead, they (Sabah and Sarawak MPs) got a rotten deal,” he said.

He said the reluctance of some MPs to accept their appointments was proof enough.

He also said, “These MPs should stand up on behalf of the rakyat and ask… such as higher oil royalties and more equitable distribution of other resources and opportunities.”

He said if the MPs are not bold enough to voice what their electorate expect of them, of if they realise they are not being listened to within the current BN set-up, they should seriously consider joining the PKR.

“Together, we will implement the long-overdue programmes to serve the interests of Sabahans and Sarawakians.”

According to Dr Jeffrey, the BN MPs should not stay simply for the sake of hoping Kuala Lumpur will change its attitude towards East Malaysia, not should they stay in the hopes of getting something.

These MPs, he said, should not think of their own interests because in the end, they will realise that whatever they get will always be minimal tokenism just to keep them in line.

“It is time to stand up and truly fight for the people by struggling for them from a new platform.”

PKR slams BN for treating Sabah, Sarawak unfairly

Umno’s contribution to the Barisan Nasional debacle

 

With the Umno party elections just months away, there would be the temptation to project the ethnic slant but a lesson to learn is that certain instances of such posturing, such as the keris-wielding incident, have cost the Barisan massive damage. So did the fiery speeches. If they had helped, the Barisan would not have got into this mess.

A new age of politics

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wither  Malaysia under  BN ?

Zaid: Govt has to apologise to victims of 1988 judicial crisis

 

The Federal Government must make an open apology to those victimised by the judicial crisis in 1988 that led to the sacking of the then Lord President Tun Mohd Salleh Abbas, said newly-appointed de facto Law Minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim.

“We should seek forgiveness. In the eyes of the world, the judicial crisis has weakened our judiciary system,” he said.

The Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department said that although the issue was 20 years old, an apology was needed as it was wrongly handled and Tun Salleh’s sacking was inappropriate.

From 1988, the judiciary’s independence was eroded and led to allegations of corruption and abuse of power, he said.

The open apology would be one of his three main goals and would give a mandate for a fresh chapter to unfold in the country’s judiciary system, Zaid said at a thanksgiving feast to mark his appointment as a federal minister.

His second goal would be to strengthen judicial independence and the delivery of justice by revamping the appointment and promotion process of the country’s judges and magistrates.

Capable judges of integrity were important to help lure foreign investors, who had, in the past, expressed doubts about the country’s judiciary, he said.

Zaid said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was serious about revamping the judiciary and making it transparent.

The minister said his third aim was to strengthen the judiciary with the help and cooperation from all stakeholders such as the Judges, Attorney-General, the Bar Council and law enforcers such as the police.

Zaid said the judiciary must attract the best minds and good legal officers who were only loyal to the law.

“Their loyalty should not be to politicians or businessmen.

“Their moral and good judgment practices must be guided by the legal compass,” said Zaid,.

He added that this would restore public trust in the judiciary.

…

A sequence of political events led to Tun Salleh’s sacking after a judiciary-appointed Commonwealth Tribunal found him guilty of “misbehaviour.”

He was then dismissed as Lord President and this led to local and international protests, including from the Bar Council, International Commission of Jurists meeting and from the Law Asia Association.

Zaid: Govt has to apologise to victims of 1988 judicial crisis

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Nazri says no good reason to review 1988 judicial sackings

Malaysia’s new momentum

 

A number of factors contributed to rising discontent amongst Malaysians across racial divides, including rising crime, a slowing economy, a number of very public corruption scandals and increased oil prices. In addition, increasing discontent emanated from the minority Chinese and Indian communities over the pro-Malay NEP. The BN, now led by Mahathir’s hand-picked successor Abdullah Badawi, recognized its support amongst Chinese and Indians would weaken, but expected that Malay support would remain strong so as to ensure pro-Malay policies.

This was a serious miscalculation. Not only did Chinese and Indian voters flock to the polls in support of the opposition, but a number of Malays also followed suit. There was a growing realization among average Malays that benefits from the NEP seldom found their way to working-class segments of the community. Foreign investment continued to decline. Malaysia used to be America’s tenth largest trading partner. It is now the sixteenth. While the economy continued to grow, fewer people were benefitting from the gains.

Therein lies Anwar Ibrahim’s most significant contribution to Malaysia’s political earthquake. He coalesced a fractured opposition movement around the elimination of race-based politics – and did so in such a manner that supporters of the ruling BN party felt no compulsion to turn to violence, as a number of them actually agreed with Ibrahim. The achievement was made nonetheless remarkable by the fact that he campaigned through a complete media black-out and relentless attacks on his character through state-controlled media, but continued to draw significant crowds in the tens of thousands across the country including in areas dominated by the ruling party. The opposition’s innovative use of Youtube and text-messaging no doubt played a role in this as well.

Ibrahim was able to broker a cooperative arrangement amongst three major opposition parties – the left-leaning, mostly Chinese DAP, the Malay Islamist PAS party and his own PKR multi-racial Justice Party – to challenge the BN one-on-one in each contest. The opposition was able to achieve what most said was impossible given the entrenched power of the ruling BN party: it undercut BN support amongst Malays by appealing to their sense of justice and fairness. Malaysia’s race-based system was likely to give way sooner or later, but Ibrahim paved a path for peaceful transition by bringing his credibility as a Malay politician to the table while simultaneously assuring Chinese and Indians that their rights would be respected. He talked Malays into letting go of the fear that had incited communal riots in 1969. It is no small feat to transition peacefully out of entrenched systems of entitlement. One need only review Iraq’s unfortunate history since 2003 for an example of how such a process can be terribly mismanaged.

While the opposition victory is certainly critical for charting a more egalitarian future for Malaysia, it also bodes well for the development of Muslim democracy. The opposition coalition’s orientation brought moderate elements from the Islamist PAS party forward. PAS even fielded a non-Muslim candidate, an unprecedented move in its history. Meanwhile, Badawi sought to leverage racial divide by appealing to Malays through increasingly Islamist rhetoric. His efforts were resoundingly rebuked. The election results demonstrate that the majority Muslim country is interested in exploring a system politics that does not discriminate based on race or religion.

A weakened BN party cannot be entirely attributed to Anwar Ibrahim’s improbable political resurrection. However, he undoubtedly played a critical role in organizing the opposition and reasoning the Malay population through this transition. Political possibilities that were unthinkable last month in Malaysia are now suddenly on the table. Ibrahim refers to this reality as a new dawn for the country. If he is successful in accomplishing his stated goals, most fair-minded observers would have to agree.

washingtonpost.com

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dawn of a new, better  Malaysia

Malaysia, under BN

Malaysia Towards a new political era

 

The fractured system under which parties represent either the majority Muslim Malays or one of the minority groups looks set to be consigned to history, replaced by a modern two-party system.
“People want to see justice. I could sense that people were fed up with political issues along racial lines”, Anwar Ibrahim said after the polls, which handed the opposition a third of parliamentary seats and four states.
The New Straits Times said the Barisan Nasional coalition achieved 51.2 percent of the popular vote after support from ethnic Chinese plunged from 65 percent to 35 percent.
Backing from the smaller ethnic Indian community plummeted from 82 percent to 47 percent, while the number of Muslim Malays, who form the coalition’s bedrock, fell from 63 percent to 58 percent.
Many flocked to Anwar’s Keadilan party, which held just one seat in the outgoing Parliament but which will now have 31 seats. The Chinese-based Democratic Action Party has 28 and the Islamic party PAS has 23.
Keadilan has become Malaysia’s first major multi-ethnic party, made up of candidates from all three races and supported by all three — a momentous achievement.
Meanwhile, the coalition’s Chinese and Indian parties have been annihilated, bearing the brunt of anger over the government’s handling of inflation as well as mounting ethnic tensions.
“The race-based system is breaking down”, mused Johan Saravanamuttu of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
“The government is not looking so representative… and may have to re-engineer itself to be much more cognizant of this shift in the way people are voting”.
Saravanamuttu said the dominant United Malays National Organization would have to do a radical rethink about how it could become more inclusive to face the new challenge posed by Keadilan.
Already there are calls for a revamp of the party that has ruled Malaysia for half a century.
“We now face a period of uncertainty such as we have never experienced before”, commented Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a former finance minister and UMNO veteran.
“People are now saying that UMNO has lost its legitimacy to represent the Malays. The other Barisan component parties have already lost their leadership role as representatives of the other major races of this country”.
The Star newspaper’s Wong Chun Wai said in an editorial that the Barisan Nasional could consider reforming into a one-party, multi-racial organization.
“In the years to come, convincing younger voters to support a party purely on communal grounds will become tougher”, he said. “A two-party system seems likely to evolve from the outcome of this general election. The first page of the new Malaysian political era opens today”.

Malaysia Towards a new political era

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dawn of a new, better Malaysia ?

Malaysia says to review judiciary, seeks apology

 

Malaysia has signaled it would clean up the judiciary and apologize to a former chief judge in the first policy reforms since the government suffered a shock setback in March 8 election, a newspaper said on Sunday.

The country’s newly named law minister told the New Sunday Times in an interview that he would propose setting up a body to consider the appointment and promotion of judges to help ensure an independent judiciary.

The reputation of the judiciary has been under question since the late 1980s, when the head of the Supreme Court, Mohamad Salleh Abbas, was removed from office after a clash between then premier Mahathir Mohamad and the judiciary.

Mahathir also introduced constitutional changes in 1988 that limited judicial power and, critics say, effectively ensured that government decisions could be protected from legal challenge.

Law Minister Zaid Ibrahim told the newspaper he would propose to the government that it apologize to Salleh and other judges who had been sacked.

“I’m saying it’s clear to everyone, to the world, that serious transgressions had been committed by the previous administration,” said Zaid, a prominent lawyer himself.

“I believe the prime minister is big enough and man enough to say that we had done wrong to these people and we are sorry,” he added.

But he said the government would not re-open Salleh’s case despite calls by lawyers for an impartial review of the case.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, trying to shore up support after the devastating electoral setback, has tapped Zaid, who ran the country’s biggest law firm, to help rebuild confidence in the judiciary.

Zaid said the appointments and promotion of judges would be institutionalized to ensure greater transparency.

“There is no more place for one man to decide in the secrecy of his room,” he said.

The judiciary came under the spotlight in recent months after the opposition released a video purporting to show a senior lawyer boasting to a judge of his ability to fix judicial appointments.

A royal commission of inquiry, set up to investigate the case, has yet to release its findings.

Malaysia says to review judiciary, seeks apology – Yahoo! News