Malaysia Boleh!

I have no words to say when our national football team won the Sea Games gold medal in Laos recently. I hope the victory is a turning point for the future of our national football.

Our Tigers finally roared after 20 years of waiting, they triumphed over Vietnam in the football final of the 25th SEA Games in Laos, 1-0 score line giving Malaysia's first gold medal in the event in two decades. Malaysia were last crowned in 1989 defeating tough rivals Singapore in the 1989 edition of the games that was hosted in Kuala Lumpur.

Vietnam trounced Singapore 4-1 at their semi final while Malaysia had beaten hosts Laos 3-1 in the same stage. Malaysia overturned a lackluster first-half performance to beat it's opponent, it defeated Vietnam although lost an earlier encounter between the two teams at the group stage.

The win is all the more precious for Under-23 squad, which had arrived at the SEA Games with little to no hope of leaving with a medal. Now, they are coming home with the gold. Our side has fallen a long way since the heady days of the 1970s and 1980.

Failure to nurture talent, racism, poor management, cronyism, corruption and a lack of government support are the main problems that haunting Malaysia’s football. It seems like these problems are handled in the better manner now as our performance is recovering from day to day.

Congratulations to Malaysian Tigers for fulfilling 27 million Malaysian’s dream, definitely the main credit goes to the coach K Rajagopal 'Tiger King' for the hard works in building up the 25^th Sea Games football squad and his superb guidance to his boys.

HEAD COACH K RAJAGOPAL WITH HIS BOYS

TEAM CAPTAIN AIDIL ZAQUAN (8) WITH GURUSAMY (16)

MALAYSIAN PLAYERS CELEBRATING THEIR VICTORY OVER VIETNAM


THE STAFF:

Team Manager
Datuk Redzuan Sheikh Ahmad

Assistant Manager
Datuk Subahan Kamal

Head Coach
K. Rajagopal

Assistant Coach
Tan Cheng Hoe

Goalkeeping Coach
Mohd. Faozi Mukhlas


THE SQUAD:

Goalkeepers
Mohd Farizal Marlias
Mohd Sharbini Mohd Alawee

Defenders
Mohd Sabre Mat Abu
Mohd Azmi Muslim
Mohd Asraruddin Putra Omar
Mohd Nasriq Baharom
Mohd Muslim Ahmad
Mohd Aidil Zafuan Abdul Radzak
Mahali Jasuli
Mazlizam Mohamad

Midfielders
Baddrol Bakhtiar
S. Kunanlan
K. Gurusamy
Mohd Safiq Rahim
Mohd Amirul Hadi Zainal
Amar Rohidan

Strikers
Abdul Manaf Mamat
Norshahrul Idlan Talaha
Ahmad Fakri Saarani
Mohd Zaquan Adha Abdul Radzak

Islamic or Secular?

Tunku Abdul Rahman upheld the independence social contract of a secular Malaysia with Islam as its official religion. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, Abdul Rahman stated in the The Star newspaper of 9 February 1983 that the "country has a multi-racial population with various beliefs. Malaysia must continue as a secular State with Islam as the official religion."

In the same issue of The Star, Abdul Rahman was supported by the third Malaysian Prime Minister, Hussein Onn, who stated that the "nation can still be functional as a secular state with Islam as the official religion.

Just compare Malaysia with Indonesia and India. Indonesia with its 80 percent Muslim population is committed to secular, plural polity embracing its Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities. While India is not a Hindu Nation although has significant majority Hindus. 80.5% or 800 million of Hindus are currently in India. Some local politicians are calling Malaysia as “Islamic Nation” with only almost 60% of Muslim around. So is it logic and acceptable?

I have a question for our Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak! What's your stand on this? Malaysia is an Islamic or secular nation?

Anwar Ibrahim Listed Among Top 100 Global Thinkers

1. Ben Bernanke

2. Barack Obama

3. Zahra Rahnavard

4. Nouriel Roubini

5. Rajendra Pachauri

6. Bill Clinton

7. Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler

8. David Petraeus

9. Zhou Xiaochuan

10. Sayyid Imam al-Sharif

11. Fernando Henrique Cardoso

12. Bill Gates

13. Dick Cheney

14. Larry Summers

15. Martin Wolf

16. Mohamed El-Erian

17. Benedict

18. Richard Dawkins

19. Malcolm Gladwell

20. Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart

21. Thomas Friedman

22. Robert Shiller

23. Vaclav Havel

24. Chris Anderson

25. Joseph Stiglitz

26. Aung San Suu Kyi

27. Robert Wright

28. Elinor Ostrom

29. Paul Krugman

30. Kofi Annan

31. Bernard-Henri Lévy


33. Robert Zoellick and Dominique Strauss-Kahn

34. John Holdren and Steven Chu

35. Nicholas Stern

36. Paul Collier

37. Fareed Zakaria

38. George Soros

39. Jeffrey D. Sachs

40. William Easterly

41. Esther Duflo

42. Jared Diamond

43. Richard Posner

44. David Kilcullen

45. Abdolkarim Soroush

46. Muhammad Yunus

47. Christopher Hitchens

48. Ayaan Hirsi Ali i Al

49. Tariq Ramadan

50. Nicholas Christakis

51. Ahmed Rashid

52. Helene Gayle

53. Linus Torvalds

54. Tim Berners-Lee

55. Henry Kissinger

56. Niall

57. Baltasar Garzón

58. Amartya Sen

59. Barbara Ehrenreich

60. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

61. Salam Fayyad

62. Xu Zhiyong

63. Mario Vargas Llosa

64. Michael Ignatieff

65. Francis Fukuyama

66. The Kagan Family (Donald, Robert, Frederick, and Kimberly)

67. C. Raja Mohan

68. James Hansen

69. Freeman Dyson

70. Esther Dyson 1. Ray Kurzweil

72. Jamais Cascio

73. Nick Bostrom

74. Gordon Brown

75. Richard Haass

76. George Ayittey

77. Amory Lovins

78. Bill McKibben

79. Anne-Marie Slaughter

80. Samantha Power

81. John Arquilla

82. Peter W. Singer

83. Paul Farmer

84 . Hu Shuli

85. Jacqueline Novogratz

86. Jacques Attali

87. Karen Armstrong

88. Sunita Narain

89. Adam Michnik

90. Minxin Pei

91. Willem Buiter

92. Rizal Sukma

93. Martha Nussbaum

94. David Grossman

95. Enrique Krauze

96. Hans Rosling

97. Valerie Hudson

98. Andrew Mwenda

99. Emily Oster

100. Paul Kennedy

Read about the world thinkers here- The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers

Read about Anwar Ibrahim here- Anwar Ibrahim Listed Among Top 100 Global Thinkers

The Flying Doctor a.k.a Fastest Man in Asia

M JEGATHESAN (415) DURING 1960's

In his day, he was regarded as the fastest man in Asia. In 1966, he earned the accolade of being the fastest man in Asia by winning three gold medals at the Bangkok Asian Games in the 100 m, 200 m and 400 m events. Datuk Dr Mani Jegathesan, fondly called the Flying Doctor for blazing the tracks around Asia despite being a doctor, was an icon in the 1960s, regarded as the "Golden Era" of Malaysian athletics.

At the Kingston Commonwealth Games in 1966, Dr Jega became the first Malaysian to qualify for the final of the 220-yard (now the 200 m) race. Forty years later, Dr Jegathesan not only became an accomplished athlete, well-known doctor and researcher but did the country proud yet again through his appointment as Chairman of the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) Medical Commission and honorary Medical Advisor for the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

Dr Jega has competed in three consecutive Olympics, namely Rome (1960), Tokyo (1964) and Mexico (1968). Dr Jega also has the distinction of appearing in two 200 m semi-finals in the Olympics and his time of 20.92 s, set in 1968 at the Mexico Olympics, still remains intact in the Malaysian athletics records book. His 200m national record in 1968 is the oldest in the records books but as much as he would love to see his record remain unbroken, he hopes Malaysian athletes would strive harder to not only smash his record but also reinstate the country's status as a leading power in athletics, just like in the 1960s.

His successors like Rabuan Pit, Watson Nyambek are always being highlighted by the media during major tournaments such as SEA Games and Asian Games, but why Dr Jega been forgotten? Because he is an ethnic Indian? Dear brothers and sisters, he represented Malaysia not India. I'm very disappointed with Malaysia for their racist mindset. The history shows that no one had achieved better in athletics than him until today, so do remember him for his contribution to Malaysia.

Dr Jegathesan: "It is my sincere hope to see Malaysia emerge as an athletics powerhouse in the region and appear in the final of a major event like the Asian, Commonwealth or Olympic Games."

1Malaysia: Membudayakan kencing dan pijak demi kepentingan politik

Satu lagi projek 1Malaysia! Perbuatan sesetengah pihak yang berkepentingan politik amat menjijikan. Malah aksi yang paling biadap dan tidak bertamadun ini tidak pernah berlaku dalam sejarah negara. Aksi kencing berdiri atas gambar pemimpin parti lawan juga melambangkan betapa matangnya mereka berpolitik.