Home Ministry virtually encouraging tragedy to happen

Richard Teo
8 December 2009

Racist Remarks by Utusan
Any other mainstream media writing what has been written by Utusan Malaysia would have lost their licence to publish a long time ago. For some time now they have been writing inflammatory articles to incite the Malays to riot and perhaps cause another mayhem similar to the one that happened on May 13 1969.

But this Umno-controlled media seems to have a carte blanche right to publish articles that are seditious and inflammatory and yet does not even receive a warning from the Home Ministry.

This ploy to incite the Malays to hate the non-Malays on the one hand and to preach the '1Malaysia' concept to the non-Malays on the other hand is a desperate strategy by Umno to unite the Malays against the perceived threats of the non-Malays while subtlety reaching to the non-Malays with their rhetorical concept of a '1Malaysia' merely for electoral support.

One cannot imagine that Utusan Malaysia could have taken the bold step to write its inflammatory articles without the tacit support and agreement from the Home Ministry.

By condoning and allowing Utusan Malaysia a free rein to publish racist and inflammatory articles, the Home Ministry must bear full responsibility should any untoward accident occur as a result of their publications.

An impartial and responsible Home Ministry would have nipped in the bud this wanton act of sedition rather than allowing it to continue inciting hatred . By allowing Utusan Malaysia to continue fanning racial hatred through its publications, the Home Ministry is virtually encouraging a tragedy to happen.

The Legend of Dr. Mahathir
And looking back at Dr Mahathir Mohamad's 22 years of tenure at the helm of the nation, it is not difficult to comprehend why we lost so much money through looting by his family and his cronies.

His favourite moneymaking trick was to launch mega-projects and privatisation of government companies. His many mega-projects were fronts to dish out negotiated tenders to his children and cronies whereby sweet deals were quoted with price many times its actual value.

The more projects he launched and the more expensive the projects, the higher and better the profits which were accrued by the beneficiaries. And when his son's venture in the shipping business failed, he unhesitatingly used a government vehicle - the Malaysian International Shiping Corporation (MISC) - to bail his son out.

Bank Bumiputra which was a government-owned bank gave millions of unsecured loans to Mahathir's cronies and in the end all of them ended up as non-performing loans (NPL). In the end Petronas' oil money was used to bail out the bank. Similar bail-outs were later repeated for MAS, Bank Rakyat, Perwaja Steel and countless other GLCs.

His lack of business acumen saw the country lose heavily when he tried to corner the world tin market. It was conservatively estimated that his brief foray in the speculation on the tin market cost the nation a loss of RM20 billion.

There are still a lot of Malaysians who are foolishly ignorant of Mahathir's woeful tenure. He was not only a corrupt dictator who would not brook any dissent but he was also a racist too. Many of the instituitions which were created during his tenure had racist overtones. The Mara colleges (MRSM), UiTM and Biro Tatanegara were all his creations.

They all had one thing in common - they all catered for only one race with the exception of Mara colleges (*only matriculation course but not university courses) which later opened its door to allow a 10% non-bumi entry. The rest all had a racist agenda.

In short, time and history will not judge Mahathir favourably. His 22-year tenure saw the crumbling of all our government institutions which were once the pride of Asia. The judiciary, the attorney-general's department, the police force, the ACA, the civil service and virtually every instituition which was the cornerstone of a democracy became subservient to the executive.

Not only did they lost their independence and became servant and slave to the executive but they also lost whatever shred of integrity that they had.

It would not be wrong to credit Mahathir as the PM who destroyed the very fabric of Malaysia's democratic institutions which till today still bear the 'hallmarks' of his imprints.

Small case, sick joke

Dean Johns
9 Dec 2009

Try as I do every week to poke fun at the antics of Malaysia's clownish Umno/BN government and its cronies, I confess that, as my old blogger buddy Ktemoc recently pointed out, I sometimes lose my sense of humour. Like this week, for example.
However hard I strain to see the funny or 'punny' side of outgoing MACC chief commissioner Ahmad Said's comment that "Teoh Beng Hock's case is nothing. It's a very small case", I'm afraid I can't raise so much as a ghost of a smile.

In fact the best I can manage is a snort of contempt. As if it wasn't shameful enough to serve as the figurehead of Umno/BN's latest fake corruption-fighting body, Said has further personally and professionally disgraced himself with this crass attempt to make light of a case of suspected murder by his MACC henchmen.

At least I'm not alone in my failure to get a giggle from this gruesome remark. Lim Kit Siang, for example, blogged that Said's statement was "heartless and grossly insensitive", especially following his earlier and equally outrageous comment that "if people investigated could not withstand the pressure and jumped from the building, there was nothing that MACC could do".

Said might well be jumping early from his job, and laughing all the way into prosperous retirement, but if he lives long enough the joke could eventually be on him. Come the day that enough of the Malaysian people stop choosing to see the Umno/BN regime as some harmless national and international joke, and finally vote or force it out of office, chances are the nation will finally get a government that's serious about investigating and prosecuting 'small' cases of political homicide.

And as every law officer should know, there's no statute of limitations in cases of murder, or any amnesty either, for that matter, and this applies not just to the actual killers but also to their accomplices and accessories.

So for those of us who get a chuckle out of seeing politically-protected criminals getting their just desserts, there's a touch of gallows humour in the prospect of someday seeing some Umno/BN murder suspects go on trial.
'Small' cases, indeed

I'll personally die laughing the day that the 'small' case of Teoh Beng Hock's killing case is opened for genuine investigation followed by the trial of genuine suspects in front of a genuine court.

Ditto the small case of Altantuya Shaariibuu about which the elusive private investigator P Balasubramaniam, aka Bala, is still making "frivolous" allegations against Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.
And then, of course, there are countless cases to be made against members of the 'royal' Malaysian police concerning suspicious deaths in 'shoot-outs' and in custody.

But of course the eventual outcome won't be as jolly as the one I'm envisaging, as the moment a respectable government looks like gaining office in Malaysia, all the Umno/BN goons with the guiltiest consciences will use their ill-gotten gains to fund their getaways to greener pastures.
Meanwhile, the grim comedy grinds inexorably on, as horribly hilarious as ever, with Najib endlessly repeating his ridiculous 1Malaysia slogan and the irrepressible Dr Mahathir regularly stealing the limelight with his customary madcap remarks.

The latest inspiration for Dr M-style drollery, it seems, has been somebody's suggestion that Australia be asked to supervise the conduct of future Malaysian elections.
While no doubt well-intended, and motivated by a well-founded distrust of Malaysia's Umno/BN-biased Electoral Commission, I must say that I'm with the Mahathir in considering this idea ludicrous. Not, as the good doctor typically does, on racial grounds, but for purely practical reasons.

Intervention in any nation's internal affairs is a job for the United Nations, not for Australia or any other individual country. And in any case, Australia has enough problems keeping tabs on its own crooks and opportunists, especially those in property development with friends and contacts in state and local government, without taking responsibility for anyone else's.

The best Australia can do, in my opinion, is to welcome as many Malaysian migrants, students and visitors as possible, for as long as they're happy to stay here. Which brings me to one thing about Umno/BN that I've recently found at least mildly amusing: Najib's call for Malaysian expatriates to return home and help build a better nation.

I asked a young student I know whether he planned to move back when he finished his course, and he was so shocked, taken aback and lost for words he just laughed. Thereby expressing how a great many fellow overseas Malaysians must feel about repatriating to the kind of place where law-and-order and justice are a standing joke, the press is a pack of lies and evasions, and organisations like Biro Tata Negara (BTN) are paid with public money to promote racial division and distrust.

However, as much as I sympathise with Malaysians, including my wife and daughter, who wouldn't go back to live there if you paid them, I think it's a terrible pity. Because many of those who have returned, or have chosen to stay despite everything, may well prove the nation's salvation.

If serious journalists like Steven Gan and Prem Chandran hadn't come back, for example, there would be no honest alternative to the laughable 'mainstream' media. And if all the opposition politicians, bloggers, activists and other serious opponents of the joke Umno/BN government hadn't either come back or stayed put all along, Malaysia would be in an even more desperately derisory state than it is now.

A situation that's admittedly hard to imagine when the government's such a basket-case that its so-called 'anti-corruption' commission can get away with calling the death of a suspect in his officers' custody a 'small case'.

But I fancy that more Malaysians are, like me and my old mate Ktemoc, finding it increasingly difficult to see the funny side. And looking forward more than ever to the eventual day when we all enjoy the last laugh on the jokers of Umno/BN.

Attack of the killer kleptoids

Dean Johns
2 Dec 2009

Trying to make sense of the political scenario in Malaysia is always a surreal experience. But at times it all seems so far-fetched and flat-out fantastic that I think I must have lost the plot.

Or else that I've actually been asleep all this time, trapped in some bizarre nightmare based on replays of all those hair-raising old Hollywood horror movies I used to frighten myself silly by sitting through.

At times like these I get desperate for some kind of reality check. So you can imagine how grateful I feel to the likes of Barry Wain, with his new biography of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, for reassuring me that the doctor isn't some scary childhood movie memory or figment of my fevered imagination, but is actually, if incredibly, the former long-time prime minister of Malaysia.

And that the Frankenstein monster the doctor created isn't just some filmic fable, but a real-life political machine that's still rampaging around the country wreaking havoc wherever it goes and indulging its insatiable appetite by devouring whatever it can get its hands on.

If you'd believe Barry Wain, and why wouldn't you, as long as he works for neither the Malaysian nor Singapore mainstream press, the BN machine has swallowed RM100 billion of Malaysians' money in the past 25 of its 52 years in power.

And according to Time magazine, economist Daniel Lian of Morgan Stanley Singpore estimates it's consumed about three times the amount estimated by Wain, or US$100 billion.

Here, in case you missed them, are a few highlights of this saga of monumental theft, fraud and embezzlement:
· Bumiputra Malaysia Finance (BMF) swindle: US$1 billion.
· Bank Negara foreign-exchange fiasco: RM20 billion.
· Extra BMF bailouts: US$600 million.
· Perwaja Steel bankruptcy: US$ 800 million.
· Maminco tin market manipulation: US$500 million.
· Bank Islam non-performing loans scam: RM2.2 billion.
· Highway concessionaire bailouts: RM38.5 billion.
· Mirzan Mahathir's MISC rescue: RM600 million.
· Port Klang Free Zone scandal: RM12 billion

If that's not enough plundered billions to make you bilious, don't worry. It's just the tip of the iceberg. Or should I make that ‘heistberg'? Whatever, it's a considerable quantity of loot for a government to steal from its citizens.

Heart-breaking human cost

How the Malaysian people have tolerated being robbed on such an epic scale for so long I can't begin to guess. Why so many millions of them never stopped voting for the doctor or his successors, or never chased any of them, King Kong-like, up to the top of the Twin Towers to his downfall and doom is a total mystery.

Unless, of course, that like me they've been assuming that the whole thing was so unbelievable that it must be just a movie, and gone on scoffing their popcorn and kuaci as though the horror would eventually end and they could safely return from this harsh reel world to an altogether happier real one.

Or maybe they were thinking that, as long it was only money the monster was after, they'd be safe if they let it have its fill, and that with luck they might score their share of any small change that happened to slip through its fingers.

What they failed to realise, however, is that the BN money-chomping monster's been in league all along with those other fixtures of this long-running Malaysian fright-flick, the werewolves of the police and MACC, the body-snatchers of the internal security ministry, the vampires of commerce, contracting and the civil service, and the droids of the mainstream media.

With a monster cast this creepy to contend with, it's no wonder so many otherwise potentially sentient citizens have been turned into such political and ethical zombies.

With the watchdogs of the law at their throats, thousands of blood-suckers with their fangs in their necks and hundreds of make-believe journalists busy blinding their eyes, deafening their ears and dumbing their minds, some people are bound to get somewhat confused.

Which brings us to the fact that the tragedy is not so much the amount of money, land and other public property that BN and its minions have stolen and continue to steal but the heart-breaking human cost of it all.

The financial toll taken by the police, MACC and judiciary in corruption is chicken-feed compared with the priceless protections and trust that they've stolen from the people, not to mention the countless lives they've stolen from ‘suspects' in staged ‘shootouts' and ‘questioning' in custody.

Revenge of the voters

The billions looted and squandered by the government and its cronies are nothing compared with the human rights, educations, opportunities, hopes, dreams and futures they've stolen from Malaysians born on the ‘wrong' side of the screen that the ideologues of BN have erected between the races and religions on which to play their wayang kulit of 1Malaysia.

And now, having skinned the Malaysians alive in every conceivable fashion from financial to spiritual, they've had the hide to introduce a goods and services tax, thus adding even more to the swag of oil and tax revenues that BN has traditionally siphoned-off from behind the impenetrable screen of the official secrets act.

They're also, I see, still paying Najib Abdul Razak's airfare and considerable expenses to go around the world robbing Malaysia of even more of its Mahathir-ravaged international reputation with remarks like his recent one in New York that "Malaysia's message of reforms and transformation must be told to foreign investors".

Who does he think he's kidding about Malaysia as long as it's still business as usual for him and his gang of BN bandits? Doesn't he realise that embassies and high commissions report the truth back to their home governments?

And that trade commissioners and reputable global financial media keep investors informed of the larcenies of national governments like Malaysia's?

Sometimes I think Najib's recited his script so often he's started to almost believe it himself.

I certainly hope so. Because the more over-confident that he and his coalition cronies become that their ‘Attack of the Killer Kleptoids' production is set to run permanently, the more shocked they'll be by its inevitable sequel, ‘Revenge of the Voters from Hell'

太CHINESE了！

“太CHINESE了！”
此话飘过耳际时，你有何感觉呢？
是贬或是褒，大家心中有数。

华校生常被讥讽
用华语腔说国语
以方言调讲英语
S与Z，混淆不清
L与R，舌头结巴

更笑
咱们成天投诉
华校不够、师资不足、设备不全
老调重弹又重唱
脑子里老是华文教育
太CHINESE了

抗拒英语数理科
挺独中 援白校
推动华教运动
维护中华文化
似乎等同
语言沙文主义
自我独化 自我隔离
墨守陈规 食古不化
太CHINESE了

终日
阅读华语报章
收听华语新闻
哼唱华语乐曲
观看华语电影
样样华语为主
实在太太CHINESE 了

这是马来西亚
不是中国大陆
政治人物常如此喝道
直指我们太CHINESE 了
妨碍各族交流
阻碍国民团结

原来这都是CHINESE惹的祸！

哀莫大于心死。。。

此时此刻的国家领袖

黑白不分，颠倒是非
抹煞人权，沾污道德准绳
搞得国家乌烟瘴气，愁云惨雾，藏垢纳污

助长马来回教极端主义
维护流氓土匪
封杀正义之士
赏罚不分
的确人神共愤

哀莫大于心死
朽木不可雕也
唯求一个全新的政府
为我们带来新希望
新未来！

我们需要新政府!!!

拉惹柏特拉、郭素沁、陈云清

2008年9月12日永远会记载您们对国家民主与自由的贡献