Today, 29th Oct 2014 is the second day of Anwar Ibrahim's Sodomy II trial at The Palace of Justice in Putrajaya. The court case is extended one day till 30th, and the verdict could be deferred to a later date. Wesley Nga and I dropped by and hoped to get into the court room but it was full, so we loitered around and took photos. Today there was a supporting crowd of at least 2,000 people, and all of us hopred that justice will prevail. Of course, Christians all over the country were praying for justice in this matter.
Datuk Ibrahim Ali's threat to burn Bibles containing the word 'Allah' last year was deemed to have been made in the context of defending Islam and hence it was acceptable. – The Malaysian Insider file pic, October 27, 2014
Context, theAttorney-General Chambers said today, was the important ingredient to consider when deciding whether DatukIbrahim Alicommitted sedition when he threatened to burn bibles that contained the word "Allah" last year.
"As decided by thecourt, before a statement is said to have seditious tendencies, the statement must be viewed in the context it was made ...
"When studied in its entire context, Datuk Ibrahim's statement is not categorised as having seditious tendencies.
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"It was clear Datuk Ibrahim Ali had no intention to create religious tensions, but was only defending the purity of Islam," the AGC said, noting the Perkasa chief also said: "This is not a sentiment or (an attempt) to provoke religious tensions, but to defend the purity of Islam which is clearly (stated) in the laws."
"He also did not commit any offence under Section 298 or 298A of thePenal Codeas he was clearly defending the purity of Islam."
Right. So the context is this, Ibrahim was not charged because he said he was not attempting to provoke religious tensions but was defending the purity of Islam.
Well, to put it in context, that is a half-baked explanation by the AGC, a comment after the fact.
In any court, this type of mitigation would have been laughed at.
Can the AGC explain what made the legally correct statement by the late Karpal Singh and academics Dr Azmi Shahrom and Dr Aziz Bari seditious? What was their context that made them liable for sedition?
In their statements thus far, none of these three stand-up individuals caused an affront to the dignity of another religion or community. Their words were factual and based on the law of the land.
Yet, one was convicted of sedition and the other two face sedition charges. And many others run the risk of being prosecuted without knowing the context of the offence.
But the one individual who has consistently caused the mercury of race and religion to rise in Malaysia is being defended by the AGC and thefederal government.
How's that for context in Malaysia? – October 27, 2014.
即使三年前房产没大幅度飙升时，月入五千根本买不起一所20万块钱的房子，跟甭说现在提的40万令吉的房产。政府以此为最高界限，因为现在发展商建造的40万令吉的房产乃等同三年前的那般。夫妇每月总收入一万令吉或许才获得银行有条件贷款一所20万令吉房子！通常银行只贷给你70%以下，甚至是属于DINK族群，即 Double
Income No Kids（双薪又没孩子的）。只要有一个孩子，家庭月入约须1万5千令吉！两个孩子的话，月入两万都不够。因为除了须缴一大笔税外，孩子的教育费即接着来。所以他们不是重惨阶级是什么？
即使三年前房產沒大幅度飆升時，月入5千根本買不起一所20萬塊錢的房子，更甭說現在提的40萬令吉的房產。政府以此為最高界限，因為現在發展商建造的40萬令吉房產乃等同三年前的那般。夫婦每月總收入一萬令吉或許才獲得銀行有條件貸款一所20萬令吉房子！通常銀行只貸給你70%以下，甚至是屬於DINK族群，即DoubleIncome No Kids（雙薪又沒孩子的）。只要有一個孩子，家庭月入約須1萬500令吉！兩個孩子的話，月入兩萬都不夠。因為除了須繳一大筆稅外，孩子的教育費即接著來。
While Indonesia marked another democratic advance on Monday, democracy in neighbouring Malaysia goes backwards.
Indonesia inaugurates the man that most voters chose to be leader, while Malaysia concludes a sham trial to destroy the man that most voters chose to be leader.
Indonesia is conducting the first transfer of power from one directly elected president to another.
Illustration: John Shakespeare
And Malaysia? It remains under the control of the same party that has ruled continuously since independence in 1957.
"While Indonesia is making huge progress, we are rewinding and the democratic space is going back to the Mahathir era of the 1990s," says Malaysia's opposition treasury spokesman, Rafizi Ramli, during a visit to Australia on Monday. "We have not recovered from last year's election."
There is more than democracy at stake. A professor of political science at Monash University's Malaysian campus, James Chin, says: "In Malaysia, politics is being hijacked by political Islam. It really worries me. They are putting Malay supremacy together with Islamic supremacy."
The foundation stone of the perennially ruling party was always racial discrimination – special favour to native Malays over all other citizens, including the country's sizeable Chinese and Indian minorities.
But now it's pursuing policies of religious discrimination as well, says Mr Chin: "Previously, they tried to regulate the body and behaviour of Muslims; now, they are trying to regulate the body and behaviour of non-Muslims too."
He contrasts this with Indonesia, where a secular state does not impose Islamic standards on other faiths. It's one thing to fine Muslims for drinking alcohol, says Mr Chin, but now there are attempts to penalise non-Mulsims taking part in Oktoberfest in Malaysia.
The authoritarian nature of the Najib government will be on display to the world next week when it renews its courtroom persecution of the opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim.
Anwar was the subject of one of the world's most ridiculous political persecutions, an effort by the then prime minister, Mahathir Mohammed, to ruin him by accusing him of sodomy. And now, a ruling on the sequel: Sodomy 2.
He was the deputy prime minister to Mahathir when they had a falling out in 1998. The foolish and farcical pursuit of Anwar failed to ruin him, but it did turn him into a formidable leader of the opposition.
Anwar spent six years in jail before a court overturned his conviction. He emerged to lead an energised campaign at the 2013 election. So the Malaysian people delivered their own verdict on Anwar and his Pakatan Rakyat, or People's Pact party.
The opposition under Anwar won 51 per cent of the vote at the 2013 election, but only 40 per cent of parliamentary seats.
It was a record result for an opposition and it shook the government. Even in a manipulated system, the ruling party, for the first time, had failed to win a majority of votes.
The result scared the government of Najib Razak into reviving its favoured tactic for repressing Anwar: the charge of sodomy. Sodomy 2 had been running for a while, but after the High Court knocked out the latest sodomy charge against the married father of five, the government took its trumped-up case to Malaysia's Court of Appeal.
The Court of Appeal overturned the High Court. It gave Anwar a five-year jail sentence. He is free on bail pending appeal. On the weekend he flew home from London to Kuala Lumpur for final appeals. His supporters fear the outcome: "Quite a few of my friends have tried to persuade me to stay away," Anwar told British media just before boarding the plane home.
The prosecution is asking for an even longer jail term.
In an extraordinary illustration of the government's contortions in its manic determination to get Anwar, the prosecution will not be led by the a lawyer from the prosecution system but a private lawyer hired by the state. Experts say there is no precedent in Malaysian jurisprudence.
In fact, the prosecution is to be conducted by the personal lawyer for Mr Najib.
The political crackdown is much wider than Anwar. Human Rights Watch has detailed at least 14 cases this year where the government has brought spurious charges against political opponents and activists under the 1948 Sedition Act. One opposition politician faces the prospect of five years in jail for saying "damn UMNO". UMNO is Najib's political party.
The Najib government has two options, according to the opposition's Rafizi Ramli: "It can reform and allow more democratic space. Or they can go for the crackdown, and risk an even worse backlash from the public."
He has personal experience of the crackdown. Before entering politics he ran a corruption-busting NGO that exposed a Najib government minister misusing a $A90 million taxpayer loan. Instead of setting up a cattle farm, she was using the money to buy luxury apartments.
The expose forced the minister to resign. But now Mr Ramli is the one facing jail. He's facing the risk of three years in jail for breaching banking secrecy laws in disclosing the corruption. Mr Ramli, the man who busted the scam, is the only person charged over it.
Mr Ramli, also the secretary-general of the opposition party, is in Canberra on Tuesday, leading a delegation. He's hoping to convince Australian politicians to help coax Mr Najib from authoritarianism to democratic openness.
Professor Chin says Mr Ramli has no hope of support from the Australian government: "The Abbott government loves Najib."
Australia favours the Najib government based on a long-standing view that Malaysia is a modern, Western, secular, like-minded power in a region fretting about a backward Indonesia, he says.
But Indonesia is modernising and it is Malaysia that is going backwards. "The romantic view of Malaysia," says Chin, "is based on a country that hasn't existed for the last ten years."'
12:56PM Oct 21, 2014 By Dr Ranjit Singh Malhi I refer to the recent controversy pertaining to the commentmade by Tan Lai Soon, a Gerakan delegate, that the Malays too were “pendatang” (immigrants). What may shock the Gerakan leadership, which decided to suspend him in haste due to reasons best known to them, is that there is some historical truth to his assertion. What may also shock many others is the fact that in 1941, there were more Chinese (43 percent) than Malays (41 percent) in Malaya.
Let me state at the outset that, as Malaysians, we should all work together hand in hand with the superordinate goal of creating a truly united and progressive Malaysia to ensure its long-term survival in a highly competitive world for the benefit of our future generations. We must put a stop to attempts made by extremists to sow racial discord and to tear our nation apart.
In this regard, I strongly believe that Tan Lai Soon’s intentions were sincere and that he spoke about the issue at the right forum. He must have been offended by numerous instances in the past of non-Malays being referred to as ‘pendatang’ and asking them to return to China or India if they are unhappy with Malaysia. Allow me to quote an internationally renowned historian (name withheld for obvious reasons) who wrote the following in his or her PhD thesis with a leading American university in 1957 which is most relevant to Tan Lai Soon’s comment:
“The Malays, to whatever political party they may belong, regard themselves as the ‘sons of the soil’, whose legitimate claims to economic advancement were virtually nullified by the immigrant, enterprising communities. Their answer to the Indian and Chinese immigration is uniform, viz., it must be drastically curtailed before the Malays are submerged.
"Indians and Chinese do not dispute the Malay claim as ‘sons of the soil’ in a general sense. They admit that whereas, theoretically, they have a mother country to fall back upon, the Malays have only one country. They, moreover, concede that prior to British penetration, Malays were the natives of the peninsula and since the Malay Sultans made treaties with the British it is logical that the sovereignty should be returned to them.
"They, however, hasten to add that the Malays, too, are an immigrant race, by and large, for an appreciable element of the Javanese-Sumatrans has flowed into the present Malay population. In 1911, during a boom in the rubber industry, thousands of Sumatrans poured in. Many Javanese were actually imported by estate owners. According to the 1947 census, about 26 percent of the Malays in the Federation were immigrants from Sumatra...
"The census also furnishes the following data. In Selangor, Malay population grew from 26,000 in 1891 to 185,000 in 1947, evidently as a result of extensive immigration. Less than 40 percent of the population had lived in Johor for 36 years, whereas the immigrants were 35 percent of the Malay population. These figures, the non-Malays claim, modify the validity of the Malay people’s claim as ‘sons of the soil’.
"Moreover, instead of the Chinese and the Indians having robbed the Malays of their wealth, many of the Javanese Malays have entered Malaya ‘attracted by the Anglo-Chinese-created riches of modern Malaya.’ In the extreme heat of impassioned reasoning, many Indians and Chinese are apt to retort, “If there are any true sons of the soil, they are the [Orang Asli].”
To conclude, Tan Lai Soon’s comment about the Malays, too, being “pendatang” has some historical justification. A significant number of those who are considered ‘Malays’ today migrated to Malaya in the early decades of the twentieth century. May the Great Architect of the Universe continue to bless Malaysia and guide its citizens to work together instead of tearing the nation apart.
4:00PM Oct 18, 2014 By M Kulasegaran At the 60th MCA annual general assembly held last December, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak said MCA has the numbers and potential to champion the Chinese community, but lacks the spirit to succeed.
“We need political viagra. Our spirit on the ground is weak,” Najib told the assembly. His comments made MCA the butt of jokes, especially in the social media.
It is therefore most ironic that yesterday, Gerakan president Mah Siew Keong said the 1Malaysia campaign, which appears to have run out of steam since the last general election, needed a lift similar to the aphrodisiac root tongkat ali, so that the campaign could be "long lasting”.
MCA leaders were laughed at for not being brave enough to rebut the prime minister for his insulting analogy. Will Najib tell Mah (left) off for making him the new butt of jokes?
Najib has talked much about the 1Malaysia concept but there is no doubt that it is merely a political slogan that rings hollow.
An example is the discrepancy in funds allocated to national and vernacular schools.
If the prime minister is committed to his 1Malaysia concept, which must mean fairness for all, he must be prepared to walk the talk and accord fair treatment to all schools.
If he is serious about his 1Malaysia concept, he will not allow racial slurs against the non-Malay communities by extremists to go unpunished.
Neither should he have remained silent till today, after Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin announced that he is Malay first and Malaysian second.
If Najib is committed to his 1Malaysia concept, he must be bold to implement colour-blind polices that will ensure an equal place for all Malaysians under the Malaysian sun. However, after decades of BN rule, the government is still not able to do this. Despite having helmed the nation’s for the last six years, Najib has failed to be the prime minister for all Malaysians.
His slogan, “I am prime minister for all” is just as hollow as his “1Malaysia” slogan.
Let me tell Prime Minister Najib and his Minister Mah Siew Keong that what the 1Malaysia concept needs in order to last long is not tongkat ali or viagra, but sincere commitment from the entire cabinet. M KULASEGARAN is the MP for Ipoh Barat and DAP vice-chairperson. Source:http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/277981
