Malaysia’s Hollow Democracy (Part One)

Glad to hear that Perakians are fighting hard for their democracy rights. They want new state government which voted from themselves and not through defections. It shows Perakians really understand what democracy means to them. Sincerely, I’m proud to be Anak Perak!

Born in Hospital Besar Ipoh, rose up in small town called Tapah, I can sense what an ordinary Perak citizen feel when their rights of vote are being taken away by Sultan and BN government. People of Perak previously given mandate to Pakatan Rakyat to lead the state in March 8 general election, but Sultan of Perak turned the mandate to Barisan Nasional to rule although the both opposition and government has the same amount of seats in the State assembly.

Rests of them are declared as independent candidate since defected from PR and throwing their support towards BN. The defected 2 of 3 reps already resigned their position as ADUN in an undated letter. So its clear that they are not a valid ADUN to support BN, fresh elections needed in the two contituencies, but Election Comission (EC) denied it.

Perak is having an unstable government, whether if its rule by BN or PR. Sultan of Perak should have made a wise decision, should dissolved the state assembly earlier. Tuanku forgotten that our system is ‘Raja berperlembagaan’ or constitutional monarchy, not ‘Raja Berkuasa Mutlak’ or absolute monarchy. Even Tuanku must know the law and constitution; should not misuse power which will effect Baginda’s position as head of state or nation.

Finally, I would like to share a video and several pictures with you on how the police ordered by BN government to handle the Perakians. The police fired tear gas against the demonstrators who seeking for democracy rights through election, Malaysian leader always commenting on thr political progressions in other nations, but what about Malaysia? Don’t they feel shame of what’s happening in Perak currently?

Watch this video:

He is not a dog!:

A MAN SUDDENLY ATTACKED BY POLICE DURING THE PROTEST

STRUGGLING WITH POLICE

THE MAN BEING ATTACKED

POLICE RUNNING FOR THE MAN

FATE OF A PERSON FOR FIGHTING HIS DEMOCRACY RIGHTS

IS HE CRIMINAL?

Women attacked:

FRU BEGIN TO PUSH THEM

FRU ARE PUSHING THEM

AND THEY ARE UNABLE TO FIGHT BACK

TRAPPED BETWEEN FRUs AND ATTACKED

Internal Security Act (ISA) Violates Fundamental Human Rights

When I visited Kak Laila's blog, I saw a song video in her blog sidebar from La Khauf group. The video shows how ISA detainees are suffering in the detention. It's a fact that Kak Laila's husband also a ISA detainee. Malaysian government put them behind the bar without any strong justification. ISA allows detention without trial for long period of time, detainees only can be released with the permission of Home Ministry. Some detainees undergone detention in Kamunting detention centre for almost decade. No fair trials for them. The detainees suffer physically and mentally tortures during detention.

Thanks for La Khauf group for the song and video, watch it:

I will not Surprise if ISA used Against Pakatan Rakyat Top Leaders After This

Malaysiakini reported that Perak Menteri Besar, Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin refuse to resign as Perak government head, he claims that the three ADUN from PR that have defected and declared them as independent candidates are not valid. He furthermore wants a fresh snap poll but Sultan of Perak refused to dissolve state assembly.

At the same, Pakatan Rakyat will be organising a mammoth rally in Perak tonight, I won’t surprised if their top leaders arrested under ISA. Barisan Nasional will give reason that security of nation is under threat. They will accuse Pakatan leaders are not loyal to Perak Sultan by showing disrespect to his majesty’s decision.

I sincerely hope that Pakatan leaders are not in hurry to make verdicts that will affect them and peoples of Perak as well. This conflict is involving Sultan of Perak, so Barisan Nasional will take this as opportunity to put you behind the bar. They may give justification that Pakatan leaders are showing disloyal to Sultan and challenging his majesty’s resolution. This is not new for BN.

Dear Pakatan leaders try to be patient; people of Malaysia and Perak need you in this critical and crucial hours. If you are still enthusiastic to hold the rally, please watch out of your delivering speech tonight!

It is now up to Tuanku!

Silver State under Limelight again, state assembly yet to be dissolved with permission from Perak Sultan. Perak state government Pakatan Rakyat now is too weak to be a state government since several ADUN are declared themselves as independent candidate and hopped to UMNO as well. BN now owned sufficient reps to form a state government.

Previously Pakatan Rakyat has 32 seats, after Jamaluddin Mohd Radzi (PKR-Behrang), Osman Jailu (PKR-Changkat Jering), and Hee Yit Foong (DAP-Jelapang) submitted official letters to speaker V Sivakumar to express their intention to become independent representatives, PR’s position as state government is denied with no majority, current position shows- BN: 28; Pakatan: 28 and Independents: 3 seats.

Jamaluddin Mohd Radzi, Osman Jailu, Hee Yit Foong and several others with Najib

Jamaluddin and Osman are facing corruption charges in court, so it’s clear that they have planned something to save their position in Perak state government despite the mandate and believe of his voters given. It’s unfair to the people of Perak state and their constituency too. The defections tremendously effect whole governing institution of Perak. They should go back to the people before making any decision!

This is a betrayal of the highest order by the Pakatan Rakyat representatives of the trust the voters had placed on them. As voters, they may feel cheated. What a letdown? Now Sultan of Perak must decide on what going to happen in Perak. Tuanku (his highness) able to stop the political game with a fresh pool/snap election in Perak state by dissolving the state assembly.

People of Perak are waiting for Tuanku’s decision on tomorrow. They need a government that went through democracy process or election, not from defections! They sure hate seeing state government coming to power through back door. Please dissolve Perak state assembly!

70% of Public University Graduates are Jobless....

Some 70% of public universities and institutes of higher learning graduates in the country are unemployed. This is in contrast with 26% for private institutions of higher learning and 34% for foreign graduates. I think even the most cynical amongst us out there would have been shaken by such a staggering number of unemployed graduates. I mean how can more than half of our graduates be unemployed?

I suspect that some incompetent statistician somewhere took the total number of unemployed graduates in the country who could have graduated in different years and divided the number by the number of tertiary education students in a year to obtain the silly percentage. If however, the "70%" statistic is indeed true, then I think we might as well shut down half of our public universities.

What was more interesting however is the additional breakdown of unemployed graduate numbers by universities provided by the Ministry. Note that the following breakdown refers only to the 20,217 who have registered themselves with the Ministry of Human Resources, and does not include those who haven't bothered with the Ministry.

It is most interesting to note that Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) contributes by far the most number of unemployed graduates amongst all the universities in Malaysia. The number of unemployed produced (3,278) is more than double the next highest university, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) (1,532). To put it into context, it is hence extremely laughable that UiTM as recently years ago, declared itself to be a "world class university" and deny it to be open the intakes for Non-Malays.

IPTA vs IPTS

It won't take too long before the number of students in private colleges and universities (IPTS) in Malaysia outnumbers those in the public universities. The ratio is approaching 1:1, according to a statistic. What are some of the implications? What are some of the challenges? Is it creating a huge impact on national education standard? How about job opportunities?

With as many students entering IPTS compared to the IPTA importance will only grow and will have a big impact on the job generate potential in the education sector the skill levels of the work force and the research activities in our universities.

There are another layer of IPTS who don't have research aspirations but will be known for offering good facilities, courses and teaching. In addition, I suspect that there will also be some specialized IPTS which focus on certain types of courses – design (LimKokWing) or IT (Informatics). And then there will be a scattering of smaller IPTS which offer 'value for money' courses. These colleges have been growing rapidly since decades ago.

There will be a different in the quality and reputation of private colleges and universities. In fact some of this is already happening. There will emerge a handful of IPTS which will challenge the IPTA as research universities. Sunway Monash and Nottingham are obvious candidates. There will be other 'home grown' IPTS which will want to or be pushed to the direction of being research universities. This is another good move by private colleges and universities to competing each other in various sectors.

But there are also many concern associated with the rapid development of the IPTS, including: Generally, I think the quality of lecturers must be equal standard with IPTA. The types of courses being offered are commercially viable. The growing number of foreign students is the problems associated with this are above the limit.

The development of the IPTS has more positives than negatives, in my opinion. It provides another avenue of job creation for the country, it gives different options to Malaysians who want to earn a degree, it earns foreign exchange for the country and it can contribute towards human capital development as nations agenda that we searching for.

Ops Lalang 1987, Black Day For Human Rights

The operation saw the infamous arrest of 106 persons under the Internal Security Act (ISA) and the revoking of the publishing licenses of two dailies, The Star and the Sin Chew Jit Poh and two weeklies, The Sunday Star and Watan. Operation Lalang carried out on October 27, 1987 by the Malaysian police to crack down on opposition leaders and social activists.

The political developments which brought this second largest ISA swoop in Malaysian history since the May 13 riots were sparked ostensibly by mounting political tensions having strong racial overtones. According to the White Paper explaining the arrests, various groups who had played up "sensitive issues" and thus created "racial tension" in the country had exploited the government's liberal and tolerant attitude. This racial tension made the arrests necessary and further, forced the government to act "swiftly and firmly" to contain the situation.

The sensitive issues were brought on by what appeared innocently enough as Education Ministry appointments of some 100 senior assistants and principals to vernacular Chinese schools. This provoked a storm of protest when it was learnt that those appointed were Chinese whom were not Mandarin-educated.

Operation Lalang resulted in the arrest of 106 people under the Internal Security Act. Among the more prominent detainees were opposition leader and DAP Secretary-General Lim Kit Siang, ALIRAN President Chandra Muzaffar, DAP Deputy Chairman Karpal Singh, MCA Vice President and Perak Chief Chan Kit Chee, PAS Youth Chief Halim Arshat, UMNO MP for Pasir Mas Ibrahim Ali, and UMNO Youth Education Chairman Mohamed Fahmi Ibrahim. Other prominent non-political detainees included Dong Jiao Zhong (Chinese Education Associations) Chairman Lim Fong Seng, Publicity Chief of the Civil Rights Committee Kua Kia Soong, and WAO member Irene Xavier.

Besides that, there was also another detainee called Hilmy Noor, a Malay Christian, who was accused for "disrupting the Malay culture by being a Christian", while the Federal Constitution of Malaysia defines Malay as someone who is a Muslim, speaks Malay, and practices Malay culture. The detainees were kept at the usual place used for ISA detainees, at Kamunting Detention Center.

Although most of the detainees were released either conditionally or unconditionally, 40 were issued detention order of two years. Included were Lim Kit Siang and Karpal Singh plus five other party colleagues, a number of PAS members and many social activists. A categorization of the initially named detainees, numbering 97, gives the following breakdown:

• political parties: 37

• social movements 23

• Individuals: 37

The 1987 Ops Lalang mass ISA detentions was a black day for human rights in Malaysia.