Talkback

Move Over Democracy A Self Appointed Elite Can Manage Things Better

Banker Nazir Abdul Razak and a group of 54 other prominent individuals have urged Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah and the Conference of Rulers to endorse the setting up of a non-partisan platform to propose reforms amidst the challenges faced by the country.

In a letter, Nazir said successive prime ministers have come into power promising substantial reforms, but these promises often give way to racial and religious overtones and little change is ultimately achieved.

In addition, he said parliamentarians often fail to address structural issues because they often prioritise short-term interests and their own election.

Therefore, he said, a deliberative platform – which he proposed should be named the “Better Malaysia Assembly” – would be a better approach to push reforms….

The assembly will deliberate on issues of nationhood and institutional reforms, including matters such as the electoral system, political funding, federal-state relations, role of institutions, affirmative action and education.

It would identify specific policies and legislative changes that are required, which Nazir estimated would take 18 to 24 months of deliberation behind closed doors to reach a consensus.

Our comment

And how does Najib’s brother propose to implement these proposed reforms to be arrived at behind closed doors before being endorsed by royalty?

Should these self-appointed members of the establishment (who have dominated the country for the past 60 years and therefore own this mess) just issue these secretively negotiated solutions, dreamed up by the most privileged panjandrums of the nation, by Royal Decree and simply abolish the role of Parliament in the process?

It seems these are exactly the lines along which Najib’s brother happens to be thinking as he haughtily dismisses the suitability of elected representatives (i.e. politicians) to manage the nation.

Some cheek given that he comes from the family who has messed things up in recent years not least by over-centralising power, neutering the nation’s institutions and treating parliament like a class of children during the very limited period it has been allowed to sit.

The purpose of this steady erosion of democracy over very many years of UMNO party political dictatorship?  The desire to loot without oversight by the elected representatives of the people, whom this major beneficiary of all that corruption now seeks to blame for the consequences of this destruction of democracy by his own greedy social elite.

With more crowning irony, Nazir seeks to use the record of the past two years as some kind of proof of the failings of parliamentary democracy.  Yet it is exactly throughout this period that Parliament and democracy have been suspended by his establishment pals, leaving the country to be ruled by the King and his Counsel and puppet PMs.

The reforms that are needed in Malaysia are these:
a) a return to the rule of law – this needs no blue sky thinking on the part of Nazir Razak. The rules are there, you just need to start implementing them, instead of giving continual passes to privileged individuals like his brother and his gang of crooks.
b) The above needs a restoration of a parliament with teeth to punish the plutocratic oligarchs who have grabbed the levers of power to enrich themselves. (his own brother being the most glaring example)
c) To achieve this you must place the selection of the Speaker of Parliament back in the hands of the appropriate body i.e. Parliament not the PM.

The rest of the necessary reforms will follow from the above, if the meddling of corrupt establishment power-mongers can be kept at bay.

On the other hand, if the overbearing individuals who have controlled the country behind the scenes for decades, are put in charge via this proposed self-selected ’eminent persons group’ endorsed by royal figures, Malaysia will merely be looking at more of the same and worse.

Has Malaysia No Shame About Racism?

A foreigner was sentenced to a year in jail after being found guilty by the Lahad Datu magistrates’ court for the illegal possession of a Malaysian identity card and using it to obtain two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.

The woman, who was not identified, was charged under Regulation 25(1)(e) of the National Registration Regulations 1990 (Amendment 2007) for deliberately having another person’s identity card and falsely using it as her own on two occasions.

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Our comment

There can be few countries on earth where a woman would be sent to jail for seeking to become vaccinated from Covid.

Her crime? To be a foreigner stuck in Malaysia for whatever reason and thus unable to receive a vaccine except by using someone else’s ID card.

Would the Sabah judge have preferred her to continue as a potential spreader of the disease instead?

Malaysia, has plenty of doses of vaccine and has expressed a willingness to make sure all people in the country (whether foreign or not) should be protected for their own benefit and others. That has been the attitude of all sensible governments with supplies of Covid vaccine everywhere.

The scandal is why was this woman obliged to resort to subterfuge to get her vaccine in the first place? It is those responsible for her dilemma who should be jailed, not just for threatening her health but everybody else’s.

"Not Vote Buying"

The police found no element of “vote-buying” in a food and cash handout event for the elderly people that is being aired in a viral video.

In a statement today, Malacca Criminal Investigation Department chief Azlan Abu said the event has nothing to do with the forthcoming Malacca state election.

“The image was uploaded yesterday by several Facebook accounts, showing food packages together with RM50 cash (being handed out to the elderly people).

“Image caption alleged that it happened in Malacca while some commented that there was a political element in the programme, which was meant to gain votes,” Azlan said.

“The investigation by Malacca police showed that the event was not meant to affect the ballots. No party symbol nor element was found in the video,” he said….

The two-minute-17-seconds video clip that made the rounds on social media shows dozens of elderly people queuing up for their share of food packages and an RM50 cash handout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY1Q-W63V08

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Bunga Raya Businesspersons and Residential Association head Leong Cheng Fah believes that the event took place in Pudu, Kuala Lumpur.

“I have checked with many activists and were told that this is an annual charity event in Pudu, in which food and cash are handed out on the road,” Leong was quoted as saying.

 

Our comment

So, the Malacca police have investigated this shocking incident and have done little to explain what people can see with their own eyes. This is because their denials and assurances leave so much unsaid.

If the event had nothing to do with the Malacca election then where did the event take place and who is it that is handing out money to ‘elderly residents’? The speculation of a community voice in Malacca is inadequate on this matter.

If there is some regular charitable event where money is handed out to random folk on a regular basis then surely people would know about it?

What people do know about is the pernicious endemic practice of electoral bribery in Malaysia where money is handed out for votes before elections!

More to the point why are these ‘beneficiaries of charity’ plainly handing over their IC cards on receipt of their goodies? We can see what is going on with our own eyes in this video. This is of concern because of the practice of taking IC cards to prevent people voting or worse, to enable others to vote on their behalf.

Will the same folk have been told that after the election they will be able to collect back their IC card and another RM50?  If so, it will be a practice that everyone in Malaysia is aware of.

So, if this is not the case will the Malacca police now provide more details about where this  charitable incident took place, who was responsible for it and where their money came from so that Malaysians can find out more about what is going on with this highly peculiar set of circumstances?

It seems the forces of law in Malaysia would prefer distractions like issuing ‘Wanted’ posters for innocent foreign observers of the mess Malaysia now is in instead!

Not Just A Fine But Jail Required!

Bribing electors comes under Voter Fraud - Penalty One Year In Jail

Bribing electors comes under Voter Fraud – Penalty One Year In Jail

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Our comment

What further shame can the leadership of Malaysia’s fractious Coup Coalition heap upon its people?

Here is the former Prime Minister, Mahiaddin, whose campaign has just been fined together with his rival Najib Razak after the pair of these dirty old men took their electioneering into the Malacca market places at a risk to public health and contrary to their own laws.

So, what is he doing now? According to our own eyes he is handing a RM50* note to a passing voter – described as being a poor old man who is seeking cheap food stuffs. This is a crime on the part of the former prime minister known as electoral bribery and it comes under voter fraud, which in the UK at least would land him with a year in jail.

Perhaps ‘Moo’ has an excuse? Is he paying the motorcyclist for an illegal lift on the back of his bike or for some goods he brought to market?

In which case, how does he explain his crew of assistants one of whom is rifling through to extract another RM50 from a bundle that he appears to be clutching in a plastic holder and the other who is taking apparent notes on the identity of the recipient of this election ‘goody’?

Malaysians ought to take note that these handouts by their appallingly corrupt and embarrassing politicians are not the personal donations of the likes of Muhyiddin, pulled from their own pockets thanks to their fat salaries, but invariably stolen public money filtered into their party machinery for this very purpose amongst many others.

If Moo wishes to correct Sarawak Report on that assumption, then he can do so . Is it fake note handed out for fun? Can he trace the money to his private accounts? In either case, there is a hygiene matter. Once again this two faced PM who kept his people under a pointless and ineffective lockdown for several months is breaking his own rules and threatening public health by handing out grubby notes to people in a market place.

If Malaysia’s corrupted authorities won’t take action the people of Malacca ought – on polling day.

[*Or is this a mere cheapskate RM5 note to buy a vote? Moo is an old guy, BN’s Awang Tengah can tell him how prices have risen.]

5MDB Warnings Should Be Heeded

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has demanded the government explain several “off-budget” expenditures while debating Budget 2022 in the Dewan Rakyat today.

He named several projects, including the nationwide 5G rollout, the possible revival of the High-Speed Rail (HSR) project and attempts to privatise the Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang, Selangor.

Citing 1MDB which incurred RM32.3 billion in debts to the government, he said the public may be forced to foot the bill for these projects.

“The government has said these off-budget (projects) would not involve government allocation, but in the end, they may go back to the government.

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Our comment

It was Anwar who first raised the alarm on the original 1MDB farrago and its suspicious nature way back before the perpetrator of that theft, Najib and his UMNO party, framed him and then forced the overturn of a verdict of innocence on those trumped up charges.

Now the guilty men are back, not by popular demand but thanks to a corrupted over-turning of the elected government with the primary purpose of evading the genuine charges laid against them.

However, close on the heels of that motive has been the natural determination of a highly corrupted band of mafia politicians to once again make as much money as they possibly can whilst their hands are back on the levers of power.

For this Malaysians have sadly to thank their Agong, who chose not once but twice to assist this return to office by siding with the corrupted parties who lost GE14 and appointing secondary figures to lead the country instead of the person chosen by the electorate on the winning mandate at the head of the largest coalition, namely Anwar. The Agong is the Sultan to Najib’s home state and his family has done ‘good business’ under UMNO, hence an inevitable and very unfortunate perception of self-interest pervades this perverse employment of his powers of appointment.

Gracefully accepting the opposition role, Anwar and PH are now striving to abide by the Agong’s own requests (presently directed from his extended London holiday base) to work with his chosen party on the budget. However, once a thief as the saying goes. The Red Flags emanating from UMNO’s present budget finances (advised as they are by arch-kleptocrat Najib himself) bear all the same hallmarks of the original MO (modus operandi).

Except, this time the sums are even greater. 1MDB had only filched some $2 billion dollars (RM8.5 billion) within its first two years. However in the same time frame, Anwar warns us, 5G/5MDB (5 Malaysia Digital Blueprint) has already squandered a projected RM18 – RM28 billion on a project that market experts seem agreed is doomed to failure.

Like 1MDB the UMNO government backed project is being presented as ‘off budget’ (and therefore conveniently kept from scrutiny by MPs) but Anwar rightly warns that like 1MDB this project and its ‘losses’ will ultimately be laid at the door of the taxpayer once more. Same politicians, same financial expert (Najib) same MO.

And this is, of course, not the only vast extra expense that has bloated the cost of the budget by RM100 billion in unexplained and unscrutinised ‘off-budget expenditures’. There are a multitude of similar huge projects presented as ‘private enterprise’ but which are in fact the playthings of politicians at the public’s expense. Railway lines to nowhere, frigates which have never floated, grand infrastructure that crumbles before it is built – all excuses to lose money? Of course, they are. Leopards don’t change their spots.

Expect Najib, once he has persuaded his Sultan/Agong into pardoning his thefts (which would appear to be his plain objective) to swiftly set about his other favourite tactic… the jailing of the opposition leaders who raise awareness about the corrupt practices of himself and the UMNO party.

More Najib Distraction

Pekan MP Najib Abdul Razak stressed that the withdrawal of Malaysia’s review application on Pulau Batu Puteh in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) should be investigated.

According to the former prime minister, the country had acquired at least three new pieces of evidence on the matter which led the cabinet at that time to appeal the decision on Pulau Batu Puteh.

“I am very dismayed why the seventh prime minister cancelled our appeal to ICJ as if we have purportedly accepted the decision of ICJ as final but there is a clause in the statute of ICJ that we can appeal with new evidence.

Our comment

When the UMNO Conman isn’t flouting Covid rules by campaigning under false pretences he finds distractions to posture over. A top favourite for him and his party is the continual harassment of local Chinese citizens and allies, whilst they themselves are diving into the pocket of China itself.

Hence the latest decision to dig up a matter that has been already settled under international law in order to set up a squabble with Singapore. Yet, at the same time, day after day this government is failing to stand up to the harassment of Malaysia’s own Petronas by aggressive Chinese military vessels as it seeks to go about rightful exploration in Malaysia’s domestic waters. Not a squeak has there been on this from Najib nor from UMNO.

Thus, whilst Najib seeks to blame party boy Jho Low for his own gross corruption and to vilify Malaysian Chinese who have lived peacefully for generations in places like Malacca he has proven himself to be at the same time the secret agent of the Chinese state.

To wit, stealing from his own country whilst prime minister and funnelling the cash through Chinese state front companies placed himself and his country into the controlling palm of his creditors who had thus compromised him totally.

What better foreign agents than a corrupted prime minister and corrupted political party who have sold out their own people in return for the services of a foreign power?

We're FREEEEEE!

Najib Abdul Razak is applying for leave at the Court of Appeal to temporarily release his passport so that he could fly to Singapore to be with his daughter, who is expected to give birth there.

The former prime minister’s counsel Nur Syahirah Hanapiah today confirmed that they filed the application at the Court of Appeal recently.

“That is correct,” the lawyer said when contacted by Malaysiakini today…..

Earlier this morning, the Kuala Lumpur High Court allowed a similar application for Najib’s wife, Rosmah Mansor, for temporary access to her passport, so she could be in Singapore and give mental and moral support to Nooryana Najwa.

After failing to flee straight after the election (as they were stopped by angry crowds) the couple now seem set to get away thanks to the coup government.

After failing to flee straight after the election (as they were stopped by angry crowds) the couple now seem set to get away thanks to the new coup government.

Our comment

After months during which every image of Rosmah Mansour would have served well to illustrate a fairy tale involving a wicked witch, the ex-PM’s wife presented a picture today of benign, gleeful elation.

She looked like someone who has just broken out of jail – or the very near threat of it. Which most in Malaysia are pretty sure is now indeed the case.

The reason? Unlike most small time crooks, who languish on remand behind bars for months and years in Malaysia, this woman who stands accused of stealing millions from Sarawak schoolchildren has been offered her passport to travel out of the country on a specious excuse.

Apparently, again unlike other Malaysians, her daughter must give birth in Singapore and her mother must be there. For this reason the court has returned Rosmah’s passport – and interrupted her criminal trial to boot.

Many will conclude that this was the reason that the UMNO/PN coup took place in the first place. Since the return to power of this scandal torn political party (by overturning the democratic vote) all the charged kleptocrats from amongst its ranks have one by one managed to get their prosecutions dropped, delayed or frozen.

By this very same afternoon the convicted Najib had himself put in his own petition to the court on the exact same grounds.  He too must be in Singapore to hold his daughter’s hand as she produces her second child – passport please, now that we have the precedent!

After all, Najib has already seen his appeal put on permafrost (in the very manner that the former PM Mahiaddin openly predicted that the judiciary could be influenced). As everyone knows a similar petition exists for Najib’s ex-deputy, Zahid Hamidi, whose ‘bad neck’ can only be attended to in Germany, despite the jaw-dropping list of charges he is facing in Malaysia.

Call Malaysians cynics, but they only expect to see these fellows back from their foreign trips if the decline of law and order under UMNO descends even further – to the extent that such crony criminals would feel secure to swan around free despite the devastating crimes they stand accused of.

This they know is entirely possible, because if these two birds fly the coup it will leave the present majority of five government even more exposed than it already is – MOU or no MOU. Therefore, citizens should prepare for dozens more charges to be dropped whilst these brave MPs are waiting it out in hospitals abroad, in order that they can return to vote free men!

'Final Reckoning' Or Just More Corrupted Spin?

Romen Bose worked as a Political Communications Consultant for former Malaysian Premier Najib Razak for six years and was a close confidante to decision makers in the upper echelon of the country’s political elite.

Romen was present during the major controversies that hit the Najib Razak administration, witnessing first-hand how the country’s leadership reacted to the disappearance of MH370 and the step by step actions of its topmost officials, as well as classified covert actions taken to retrieve the remains of Malaysian victims following the shooting down of MH17.

In Final Reckoning, the author gives a blow-by-blow account of how the 1MDB scandal rocked the Government and the attempts by the country’s top politicians and their advisers to contain and explain it away. Through numerous conversations with key players and his presence at various top secret meetings following the global investigations into the scandal, Romen pieces together for the first time how a sitting Prime Minister became the unwitting patsy of a mastermind who had managed to pull off the single biggest con of the century. In doing so, Romen tells the story of an ultimately futile scramble to try and preserve a crumbling political legacy that had long been out of step with the realities of a new Malaysia.

Our comment

Payment from 1MDB stolen money of

Payment from 1MDB stolen money of RM655,000 to author Roman Bose

It is a wise maxim to declare one’s interest in matters of opinion, should one have one. In this case the author Romen Bose who has chosen to write this upcoming promoted book about Najib Razak and his nemesis of 1MDB had himself worked for the disgraced ex-PM as his ‘media warfare’ and ‘monitoring expert’ for several years, pushing the BN government spin against factual reporting by the likes of Sarawak Report and the rest of the world media.

For this act of deception he was highly paid and with stolen money from the very heist he claims to give the inside story about.

MACC documents citing the distribution of stolen 1MDB money from Najib’s personal KL accounts show that the convicted felon ex-prime minister paid Romen Bose RM 655,000 out of that stolen loot.

So, when he advertises his upcoming book as an account as to how “a sitting Prime Minister became the unwitting patsy of a mastermind” over this “Con of the Century” readers are advised to take his version of events with a very large pinch of salt.

After all, Najib is back in the money and Bose is clearly back earning it in the same capacity as communications cheerleader he was in before.

Penguin ought to be ashamed of publishing such propaganda when the same outfit quivered in fear to publish books by the likes of Sarawak Report who exposed the criminality in the first place.

So much for the publishing industry’s contribution to free speech and promotion of the truth in the 21st century.