Quote on Contentment
He who is not contented with what he has,
would not be contented with what he would like to have.
Socrates
The case of the virgin prostitute
Malaysia Today
When you run naked on the street and have sexual intercourse on a park bench, can you fault the passer-by for thinking you may be not quite right in the brain?
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Syed Hamid: Review must focus on police’s power to detain
The review of the Internal Security Act (ISA) should include studies on the police’s power to detain suspects, and the creation of special officers to handle such cases, said Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar. Under the Act, police can detain a suspect for 60 days for investigation before the Home Minister, who has the power to extend the detention, issues an order to extend the period.
“To challenge this is difficult. Maybe this thing can be studied, or referred to court,” he said yesterday. He said it was also important to review the interpretation of national security and public order, two crucial elements that have always been the basis of the detention of individuals under the ISA.
He said that when the Government conducts a review on the ISA, it also needed to review two other preventive laws: the Dangerous Drugs (Special Preventive Measures) Act and the Emergency Ordinance.
On a suggestion that the name of the Act be changed, Syed Hamid said it would not end people’s anxiety over the Act. “If the body remains the same, it will not bring effects. Most importantly, what the people fear and are unhappy and concerned about are provisions that enable us to take action without being questioned in court,” he said.
Syed Hamid said what was most important was not the question of abolishing the ISA but of concerns over abuse by the police or minister. “We have to free these processes but it is not the intention and objective of the Government to abolish the ISA,” he said.
He added that Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s announcement to review the ISA in his maiden speech as Prime Minister gave the people an opportunity to discuss the issue openly to enable the Government to find the best way and approach, in line with the people’s aspirations.
Syed Hamid said the Government’s sincerity to review the controversial Act should not be disputed. “If it becomes an empty promise, we will be gravely penalised in the next election,” he said.
Syed Hamid said he also saw the Restricted Residence Act as obsolete and which needed to be repealed. On the Printing Presses and Publications Act, he said the Government also needed to determine if it was still relevant.
On another matter, he said the police must take into consideration all aspects before implementing any restructuring, including the creation of two more Deputy Inspectors-General of Police. During the 202nd Police Day celebration, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan had said the force would be restructured, including adding two more Deputy Inspectors-General and the formation of six new departments. – Bernama
Protesters besiege Asian leaders’ summit in Thailand
Supporters of former prime minister reach luxury hotel and demand current leader steps down
Guardian.co.uk
Anti-government protesters in Thailand this morning broke through a police cordon to reach the venue for a summit of Asian leaders in the resort town of Pattaya.
About 2,000 red-shirted supporters of the former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed in a coup in 2006, confronted police and troops outside the luxury hotel where the summit is being held, demanding that the government of the current prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, step down.
But tensions eased later after an official from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) emerged from the hotel to accept a letter from the demonstrators.
Protest leader Arisman Pongreungrong said they had agreed to leave the site for now and to unblock roads leading to the summit venue. But he said the protesters would regroup in the town, a few miles away from the hotel, and discuss whether to return to the summit if their demands were not met.
The action in the town, 90 miles south-east of Bangkok, follows three days of huge protests in the capital. Mass protests began on Wednesday, with 100,000 people surrounding Abhisit’s office at Government House in the capital.
Abhisit has been forced to declare today a public holiday, hoping it will be easier to control the demonstrations with fewer people in Bangkok.
In a televised address yesterday, Abhisit said he wanted to ease the inconvenience to the public caused by the protests, and make it easier to identify troublemakers. He added he would not give in to Thaksin’s demands for him to step down.
Thaksin, a telecommunications billionaire, lives in self-imposed exile, but his absence has not healed the divisions between the royalist, military and business elite, who say he was corrupt, and the poor, who benefited from his populist policies.
Abhisit became prime minister in December, after a pro-Thaksin government was dismissed by the courts.
An untalented team lacking integrity
The Malaysian Insider
APRIL 10 — If you want my honest opinion, Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s People’s Cabinet is totally uninspiring and insipid to boot. And that is being charitable. What a sad commentary on the paucity of proven talent and integrity within the ranks of Barisan Nasional that all Najib has succeeded in putting on offer is a team of recycled political expendables, many with personal records of integrity that will not bear close scrutiny.
Najib has done nothing more than a bit of tinkering. Is this the clean and honest team that he has promised the nation? Instead of calling it a Cabinet, a more accurate and honest name for it is surely “baggage room” because most of those who are our new ministers, including Najib, unfortunately, are perceived to be carrying oversized baggage into office. If this had been a team chosen by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, I should not have been surprised.
But subjecting his ministers to the discipline of the KPI or key performance indicators is an idea whose time has come. However, the danger with management tools like Long Range Strategic Forecasting and Management by Objectives, now long forgotten, and the new panacea, the KPI, is in the distinct possibility of their being more honoured in the breach than in the observance. That being said, let us see whether the new broom can keep up with a mountain of bureaucratic trash that has been generated in the corridors of Putrajaya.
As part of his whiter-than-white government, he should have said something, when he announced the Cabinet yesterday, about revamping the declaration of interests/assets regime for all those holding elected public office in his administration, i.e. his ministerial colleagues. The present arrangements are as effective as using a pop gun when confronting an armed robber. They are hopelessly inadequate and the whole exercise is a total waste of time. No one is fooled by it. I speak as someone with some practical experience in this area.
I was responsible in 2006, as Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Establishment of the United Nations Ethics Office, for putting in place the Declaration of Interests (assets) and the Whistle Blower Protection programmes. It is interesting to note that when Dr Mahathir was prime minister, he proudly proclaimed that all his Cabinet colleagues should declare their assets to him.
To whom did the prime minister declare his assets? In the interest of curbing grand corruption in the Najib administration, I will be happy to share my knowledge with him notwithstanding the fact that I am a DAP man. Corruption should not be politicised. Anyway, if it is good enough for the UN, it should be good enough for the Putrajaya Mandarins.
The nation wants Najib to succeed in his “1 Malaysia” vision. He will if he keeps an eagle eye on key institutions such as the police, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, the criminal justice system, including the office of the Attorney-General, not to interfere with their work, but to ensure that they do not abuse their power and authority.
Stupid police behaviour in dealing with public order, for example, can unravel any good the administration has tried to do. Najib must implement without delay the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission that Pak Lah did not have the stomach to put in place simply because the police top brass did not like it. Will Najib be prepared to put public interests at the forefront of all his actions, or will the police be allowed to dictate terms to our citizens?
Najib as part of his reform agenda must listen to what people are saying about the office of the Attorney-General. Rightly or wrongly, it is seen as having compromised its professional independence. Its decisions have in recent years lost the stamp of moral authority in a number of cases. Najib should consider seriously making the Attorney-General a ministerial and, therefore, a political appointee acting for the government on purely political issues.
Najib should, in the interest of greater public confidence in the criminal justice system, create a position, that of Director of Public Prosecutions. A decision whether to proceed with a case or not should not be made by the director alone, but a panel of his senior legal officers.
The problem with the present office of the Attorney-General is that the A-G enjoys what amounts to absolute power, and as we all know this can lead to abuse. Ours is a parliamentary government based on the Westminster model, and Britain has found a system of checks and balances to be absolutely vital to protect the citizens from arbitrariness in matters involving public prosecutions.
Najib can yet redeem himself by showing, by word and deed, that we have misjudged him. Has he the intellectual honesty and integrity to do what is right by the people of this country?
Dr M unwanted, says Zaid
KUALA LUMPUR, April 10 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had no effect on the April 7 by-elections and this shows that people do not want him anymore, says Datuk Zaid Ibrahim.
The former law minister, who has had a running feud with the former prime minister since his move last year to compensate judges sacked by Dr Mahathir in the 1987 judicial crisis, said this in an interview on the “Fairly Current Show”, a short programme that aired on the Internet yesterday.
Zaid, who is widely expected to join Pakatan Rakyat — most likely PKR — soon, also added that his former party, Umno, was too weak to stand up to Dr Mahathir and members were afraid of being ousted like Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who stepped down as prime minister last week after years of criticism by his predecessor Dr Mahathir.
“There were thousands of people in Sungai Petani they say, but clearly there was no effect,” he said of Dr Mahathir’s stop in Bukit Selambau in a two-stop blitz that included Bukit Gantang on the last day of campaigning in the by-elections.
PR, in fact, increased its majority in the two seats which, Zaid said, was an indicator of Dr Mahathir’s unpopularity.
“He feels that people still want him. This is the problem with strongmen who some call dictators. Sometimes, they don’t know they are surrounded by people who tell them their leadership is still needed,” he said.
He added that it was the same throughout history, citing Suharto, the former president of Indonesia, and Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, who also “do not know when they are unwanted”.
However, in a recent blog posting, Dr Mahathir continued to insist that Abdullah was still “entirely responsible for all the ills” in Barisan Nasional which led to the electoral defeats as “a leader plays a big role especially in Malaysia and the quality of his leadership affects the behaviour and performance of his subordinates.”
Zaid also mocked the idea that Umno wanted its longest-serving president back.
“It is not that Umno wants to take him back but he wants to rejoin. But nobody is brave enough to stop him. This shows Umno is very weak and its leaders are not brave enough to stand up to him because they are afraid of ending up like Pak Lah,” he said of Abdullah, who was handpicked by Dr Mahathir but then suffered years of harsh criticism from him.
Zaid cited, as an example, the fact that Khairy Jamaluddin, Abdullah’s son-in-law, won comfortably ahead of Dr Mahathir’s son Datuk Mukhriz in the Umno Youth chief contest because “he interfered. If not it would be a tougher fight”.
Zaid and Dr Mahathir most recently clashed in a war of words over the appointment of Datuk Seri Najib Razak as prime minister, with Dr Mahathir calling Zaid’s plea to the King not to appoint Najib “very stupid”.
Minister Tormentor of Malaysia
Twice in history Tun Dr Mahathir left Umno and worked with the opposition for almost three years. And twice in history Umno begged him to return like the prodigal son that he is just so that he would not damage the party from the outside. And every Prime Minister, except for Tun Abdul Razak who was ‘saved’ by death, found that their careers were in the hands of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Malaysia Today
Would Najib dare offer the new Umno Youth Leader, Khairy Jamaluddin, a Cabinet post? Or would the Cabinet post go to Mukhriz Mahathir instead? By convention, Khairy, the winner, should get that post instead of Mukhriz, the loser. But Tun Dr Mahathir is not one to follow convention. He is one who breaks from tradition.
THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Dr M denies deal with Najib
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad yesterday denied making any deals with Datuk Seri Najib Razak to appoint his son Datuk Mukhriz as a minister. Dr Mahathir said it was entirely up to the prime minister to name his cabinet.
He spoke to reporters after launching an autobiography by the first director-general of the Malaysian Cocoa Board, Datuk Hashim Abdul Wahab, In Search of Happiness.
Dr Mahathir said Najib needed to have a corruption-free cabinet to avoid a Barisan Nasional loss in the next general election. He said Najib had a lot to do to change the mindset of the people who are now more inclined towards the opposition.
On BN’s by-election loss in Bukit Selambau, Dr Mahathir said it was not caused by non-Malay votes, as the majority of voters comprised Malays. “There are a lot of Malays who are not happy with the government as well, not just the non-Malays.” — New Straits Times
To read further please go to :
MALAYSIA’S AUTHORITARIAN MAHATIR RESURGENCE Dumb Ideas Versus Reality achieved independence in 1957, then Malaya was a model of parliamentary democracy, governed under a written constitution “that accorded full respect and dignity for each and every Malayan.”
The infringement on human rights in Malaysia and at times its total and complete denial is justified by the BN MPs due to the uniqueness of Malaysian society. Its plurality, its diversity, its sensitivities.
By Khalid Samad, Suara Keadilan
Malaysia has many things which are unique. Its multiracial, multireligious and multilingual nature. Its flora and fauna. Its food. Its Parliament. The rest we can be proud of. Not the Parliament.
I dare say that it is the only Parliament in the world which when “debating” a Bill concerning human rights, the ruling party justifies and defends actions which are completely contrary to the spirit and understanding of human rights!
I would even venture to say that the BN MPs do not have the slightest inkling of what human rights are all about in the first place.
Let’s take it from the beginning though shall we. A Bill calling for the amendment of the original Suhakam Bill was tabled on March 24 morning and called for debate on March 25 morning. Hardly 24 hours’ notice. Almost an hour was used up by the PR MPs arguing against the way the Bill was being pushed through.
Not enough notice, not enough time to prepare, no time to do research and the such. The minister of course was unimpressed, replying it was only five (5) pages. In the process of the debate, Lim Kit Siang was sent out and banned from coming in until after 1pm.
When we finally started to debate the Bill, the arguments presented by the BN MPs were stupefying to say the least. They used the debate to justify the ISA, the banning of ceramahs and demonstrations and even the recent suspension of the permits forHarakah and Suara Keadilan!
Are we talking about the defence of human rights or the right to trample on human rights here? I doubt if the BN MPs know the difference.
The issue at hand was basic human rights. This means the rights which any human being, wherever and whatever he is, has a right to. The denial of these rights would constitute an act of injustice and suppression. The basic human rights include the right to life, honour, freedom, freedom of speech and expression, freedom of association, right to assemble, right to dissent and the rest.
None of these rights can be denied unless due to just cause such as having committed a crime for which one is proven guilty. Then one loses one’s right to freedom, for example, and can be put away for a period which depends on the nature and severity of the crime committed.
The infringement on human rights in Malaysia and at times its total and complete denial is justified by the BN MPs due to the uniqueness of Malaysian society. Its plurality, its diversity, its sensitivities.
As such, they claim, the practice of human rights must be in a manner which “we Malaysians” see as being suitable for our country and cannot be decided for us by international observers or according to some foreign international standard. The “we Malaysians” is of course to be read as “we BN”.
The ISA is justified as a necessary “preventive measure” to avoid political instability and chaos, while the suspension of the Harakah and Suara Keadilan permits are also necessary to avoid racial tensions and the “spread of lies”. Human rights are thus to be sacrificed for the “greater good”.
Again to be read as the “BN’s greater good”. The banning of demonstrations, would you believe it, is justified as necessary so as to prevent traffic jams and thus the denial of the public’s right to jam-free motoring!
Any objective evaluation of the arguments would conclude that there are other more transparent recourses for the government to take when faced with these situations. Trials in an open court of law can be used to prove grounds for preventive detention, newspapers can be sued for libel or for raising racial tensions.
However, these options deny absolute power and disgression to the executive and that is what they are unwilling to accept. By not allowing the system of check and balance to work, they only serve to guarantee that basic human rights, although guaranteed by the constitution, will be denied to the public.
After a short debate, hardly two hours, the minister is then called to respond to the issues raised in the debate. He does so very quickly, not allowing much interruptions or calls for clarifications and at the end explains that the Bill needs to be passed so that it can then be presented to the ICC (International Coordinating Committee) of the UN the next day!
The amendments were being made as a result of the comments received in August 2008 which noted various shortcomings in the original document. It gave little autonomy and limited transparency and as a result Malaysia’s grading may drop.
The suggested amendments were inserted and it is hoped, says the minister, that our grading would not be affected. That explains the bulldozing approach!
It took the BN minister close to a year to prepare a five-paged amendment and it was done not due to any realisation on their part of the shortcomings. As far as they were concerned, Malaysian human rights, according to Malaysian standards and realities, were OK. It was done merely to comply, at least outwardly.
If grades are determined by what is written on paper and not what is practised in real life, then we have a good chance of being upgraded. If, on the other hand, it is determined by what is practised, then as the quality of debate and nature of BN views expressed prove, we have a good chance of staying where we are or dropping further down the grading ladder!
Someone asked “what should we do?” My answer, “What any self-respecting Malaysian would. Join the movement for change. Spread the word. Distribute articles. Attend talk shows. Educate. Elucidate. Emulate. Gather family, friends and acquaintances. Register with the Election Commission as voters. Be ready for the next GE. Nothing can stop an informed and politically active society from achieving change for the better”.
[Khalid Samad is currently the PAS Member of Parliament for Shah Alam. He studied Fuel and Energy Engineering in Leeds University, UK, and is also a member of PAS Central Political Bureau. He hails from an illustrious family and his brother is Sharir Samad, the Umno MP for Johor Bahru! And yes … they are still on speaking terms …]
To read more please go to :
Mugabe Aides Are Said to Use Violence to Gain Amnesty
Elite Zimbabwe soldiers in 1982, whom Mr. Mugabe has long relied on to hold power.
The New York Times
HARARE, Zimbabwe — President Robert Mugabe’s top lieutenants are trying to force the political opposition into granting them amnesty for their past crimes by abducting, detaining and torturing opposition officials and activists, according to senior members of Mr. Mugabe’s party.
Mr. Mugabe’s generals and politicians have organized campaigns of terror for decades to keep him and his party in power. But now that the opposition has a place in the nation’s new government, these strongmen worry that they are suddenly vulnerable to prosecution, especially for crimes committed during last year’s election campaign as the world watched.
“Their faces were immediately pasted on the wall for everyone to see that they were behind the killing, the violence, the torture and intimidation,” said a senior official in Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, who, like others in the party, spoke anonymously because he was describing its criminal history.
To protect themselves, some of Mr. Mugabe’s lieutenants are trying to implicate opposition officials in a supposed plot to overthrow the president, hoping to use it as leverage in any amnesty talks or to press the opposition into quitting the government altogether, ruling party officials said.
Like South Africa at the end of apartheid or Liberia at the close of Charles Taylor’s reign, Zimbabwe is in the midst of a treacherous passage from authoritarian rule to an uncertain future. After a bloody election season last year stained by the state-sponsored beatings and killings of opposition supporters, Mr. Mugabe and his rivals in the Movement for Democratic Change agreed to a power-sharing government that includes both victimizers and victims.
But Mr. Mugabe’s lieutenants, part of an inner circle called the Joint Operations Command, know that their 85-year-old leader may not be around much longer to shield them, and they fear losing not just their power and ill-gotten wealth, but also their freedom, officials in the party said.
Their fixation on getting amnesty was described by four senior ruling party officials, all Mugabe confidants, who spoke to a Zimbabwean journalist working for The New York Times. But some opposition officials say Mr. Mugabe’s loyalists are less interested in reaching a deal than in simply forcing them out of the new government through violence and intimidation. Others suspect a push for amnesty is being sought by a broad contingent of Mr. Mugabe’s party worried about accounting for the past.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, one of Mr. Mugabe’s principal negotiators in the power-sharing talks, informally told opposition officials around the time that the transitional government took office in February that his party wanted an amnesty, according to a senior ZANU-PF official close to the talks.
“We wanted to find out if it would be possible to have amnesty dating back to 1980s,” the official said. “The M.D.C. did not sound very forthcoming.”
Indeed, the opposition has so far offered no such assurances.
“I’d rather rot in hell than agree to anything like that,” said Roy Bennett, the opposition’s third-highest ranking official. He was recently released on bail after being held for almost a month on terrorism charges. He was first implicated by a man whose doctor and lawyer say was tortured and forced into giving a false confession.
Didymus Mutasa, who served as Mr. Mugabe’s minister for national security until the power-sharing deal went into effect, acknowledged that some senior officials in his party might be worried about prosecution.
Had the party floated the idea of an amnesty? he was asked. “Perhaps,” he said.
Were abductions used to gain leverage for amnesty? “There could have been something like that,” he said, “but how am I to know?”
Still, he argued, pressing charges against senior ZANU-PF officials would be counterproductive. “It’s madness to try to go back into matters of history,” said Mr. Mutasa, the party’s secretary for administration.
The crimes committed to entrench Mr. Mugabe’s rule date back to the 1980s, when thousands of civilians from Zimbabwe’s Ndebele minority in Matabeleland were killed by the notorious North Korean-trained Fifth Army brigade, according to historians.
Among the Ndebele, the tears of the living must be shed to release the souls of the dead. But the Fifth Brigade insisted that there be no mourning for those they killed, and in some cases shot family members because they wept, according to “Breaking the Silence,” a 1997 investigation based on the testimonies of more than 1,000 witnesses.
Other political crimes include widespread attacks on the opposition in 2000, 2002 and 2005, and most gruesomely last year. Beyond that, a vast 2005 slum clearance effort known as Operation Murambatsvina, or Get Rid of the Filth, drove 700,000 people in opposition bastions from their homes.
Last year, close to 200 people were killed, mostly before the June presidential runoff between Mr. Mugabe and the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, and thousands were tortured in state-sponsored attacks, but so far no one has been prosecuted, according to a State Department human rights report released in February.
Mr. Mugabe’s party fears that even more damning evidence will be unearthed. For the first time since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, the opposition has a majority in Parliament that can investigate corruption and political violence.
“There are more explosive issues that are not in the public domain, cases that have not been reported but still have a serious impact on the future of some of the officials who were in the previous government,” said a senior ZANU-PF official.
Last year, as it did in the 1980s, Mr. Mugabe’s loyalists cut off food aid to hungry areas, blocked access to foreign journalists, sent party youth brigades to terrorize the countryside, charged their rivals with treason and used abduction, torture, arson and killings to silence critics.
Emmerson Mnangagwa, the minister who oversaw the intelligence agency in the 1980s, ran Mr. Mugabe’s warlike election campaign last year and is now defense minister. Perence Shiri, who commanded the Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland, is now air force commander. Both are among the Joint Operations Command’s 11 members, who have advised Mr. Mugabe, the man at the pinnacle, throughout.
“The Matabeleland issue can be blamed on the government as a broader entity,” said a senior ZANU-PF official. “But the post-March 29 violence and killings can be pinned down to only 12 people.”
Mr. Mugabe’s men realized they would not succeed in getting the opposition to voluntarily give them an amnesty because, as one ZANU-PF official put it, “unlike ZANU-PF they have very little to worry about in terms of crimes.”
One ruling party official, who speaks regularly with Mr. Mugabe’s top commanders, said that his party needed opposition prisoners to trade for amnesty. A second official, who attended meetings of Mr. Mugabe’s inner circle, said Air Marshal Shiri suggested jailing as many top opposition figures as possible.
A third official, who has regular discussions with the top lieutenants, said the most powerful players in the party, except for Mr. Mugabe, would prefer the power-sharing government to fail and have sought to keep opposition officials imprisoned in hopes Mr. Tsvangirai will pull out. The officials said they agreed to be interviewed because they felt the amnesty issue needed to be faced, or because they perceived themselves as safe from prosecution and possibly benefiting from the downfall of some in the inner circle.
The recent abductions of dozens of opposition and human rights activists began in October. Many were held for weeks or months in hidden locations. Most were eventually produced in court and many have provided sworn accounts, corroborated by doctors, of being tortured to elicit confessions that they were recruiting militants to overthrow Mr. Mugabe or were involved in bombing plots.
Chris Dhlamini, the opposition’s director of security, was hung upside down from a tree and dropped on his head, as well as submerged in water until he believed he would drown. His interrogators tried to get him to implicate Mr. Tsvangirai, he said.
Fidelis Charamba, a 73-year-old local opposition official, said he was pushed into a deep freezer and had boiling water poured over his genitals.
For months, Mr. Tsvangirai refused to join the government, insisting on the release of his people. Finally, though they remained jailed, he relented under pressure from southern African leaders. On Feb. 11, Mr. Mugabe swore him in as prime minister.
The arrest of Mr. Bennett, Mr. Tsvangirai’s nominee for deputy agriculture minister, just two days later cast a pall over the new government and prompted Mr. Tsvangirai and others to say that elements in the ruling party were trying to sabotage the deal.
“The hard-liners still filled with hate and vengeance want to use me to achieve one of two things: to broker a deal for amnesty or to get the M.D.C. to walk away from the agreement,” Mr. Bennett said.
In the weeks after Mr. Bennett’s arrest, the opposition pleaded for the release of its jailed activists and officials, describing them as “political hostages.” But seven abductees are still missing, and three remain in custody. Those out on bail face charges that could bring life sentences if they are convicted.
Tensions rose after Mr. Tsvangirai’s wife, Susan, was killed and Mr. Tsvangirai was injured in a March 6 car crash that many of his supporters believe was an assassination attempt. Though Mr. Tsvangirai has called it an accident, his party is conducting its own investigation.
For days afterward, thousands of mourners gathered at the Tsvangirais’ home in Harare. In the glow of lights strung across the yard, to the driving beat of drums, party workers swirled in circles, stamping their feet and chanting, “Robert Mugabe killed Susan Tsvangirai,” and “Tsvangirai beware! ZANU-PF will finish all M.D.C.”
Their fear was as palpable as their rage. When they were approached for interviews, their eyes darted around as they searched for ruling party spies and begged not to be quoted by name.
“They will kill us,” one woman said. “They are everywhere.”
Dr M: ‘Positif’ Khairy tidak tersenarai
Anwaribrahimblog.com
“Positif” – demikian reaksi mantan perdana menteri apabila ketua Pemuda Umno, Khairy Jamaluddin tidak tersenarai dalam jemaah menteri Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak yang diumumkan petang ini.
Sambil berkata tindakan itu membuktikan perdana menteri sanggup bertindak tegas terhadap rasuah, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad turut menyifatkan barisan kabinet baru itu tanda “pembersihan dalam parti” sedang berlaku, lapor Bernama.
“Najib bertindak bijak dengan menggugurkan kebanyakan mereka yang dituduh mengamalkan rasuah walaupun seorang dua entah kenapa turut terselit,” katanya hari ini.
“Ianya positif. Tak ada orang yang jelas terlibat rasuah terpilih khususnya ketua Pemuda (Khairy) yang didapati bersalah guna wang dalam pemilihan (Umno).
“Dia tak diberi apa-apa jawatan pun. Itu satu bukti Najib ingin bersihkan parti.”
Dengan ketegasan dalam menangani rasuah, bekas presiden Umno itu percaya perdana menteri boleh juga bertegas dalam perkara-perkara lain.
“Ini satu pendirian yang tegas oleh Datuk Seri Najib.
“Oleh itu saya berasa kalau dia dapat beri pendirian yang tegas dalam perkara ini, perkara lain juga dia akan mempunyai pendirian yang tegas,” Dr Mahathir dipetik berkata.
Mengulas pelantikan anaknya sebagai timbalan menteri, beliau menggesa Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir menyelesaikan masalah penjualan permit import (AP) kenderaan yang pernah menimbulkan kontroversi beberapa tahun lalu.
Negarawan itu turut yakin bekas exco Pemuda Umno itu boleh menjalankan tugas dengan baik di kementerian tersebut, lapor agensi berita itu lagi.
“Dia akan dapat menjalankan tugas dengan baik. Saya harap dia akan menangani masalah dalam pemberian permit import (AP) kepada mereka yang menjual AP,” katanya pada sidang akhbar di Kuala Lumpur.
Najib mengumumkan barisan kabinet pertamanya dengan melantik Mukhriz – seperti dispekulasikan – sebagai timbalan menteri perdagangan antarabangsa dan industri.
Ditanya mengenai pelantikan anak ketiganya, Dr Mahathir berkata: “Saya gembira. Walaupun jika dia tidak dilantik, tak apa.”
Mengulas sama ada pelantikan Datuk Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah sebagai
menteri kewangan kedua boleh membantu Najib – yang juga menteri kewangan – menangani kelembapan ekonomi, Dr Mahathir berkata:
“Saya tak tahu nak nilai Husni tapi saya tahu (Tan Sri) Nor
Mohamed Yakcop mempunyai kebolehan dalam bidang itu dan saya fikir tentulah dia dapat memberi pandangan.”
Bekas timbalan menteri perdagangan antarabangsa dan industri , Ahmad Husni menggantikan Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop yang dipindah ke Jabatan Perdana Menteri.-
Reform, or face extinction
That is the only conclusion UMNO and BN can honestly take from the just concluded Bukit Gantang and Bukit Selambau by-elections.
And that people power has found a firm footing, has rooted well, and will not be easily blown away.
Read it any other way and UMNO and BN will pay dearly at the next GE, the Sarawak state elections and every other by-election that comes our way.
And by reform, I do not mean of the cosmetic kind.
Like giving us the MACC or the JAC!
Or freeing 13 ISA detainees just before polling day!
That’s an insult to the intelligence and common sense of the average Malaysian which, as may surprise many in UMNO and BN, ought not to be underestimated.
Can BN reform?
Yes, but not under its present leadership.
To read more please go to :
![My Broken Heart [Explore 15/5/24]](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53722911143_d5a75671ec_s.jpg "My Broken Heart [Explore 15/5/24]")
The Power Of SMS 
leave a comment