Gay Marriages In Malaysia???

We were outstation yesterday to meet an aquaintance who before our appointed meeting time, happened to be doing marriage counselling duties (as part of the extensive social work he does) at the state Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara. Can't give away location details for sake of anonymity. While waiting for him we noticed this:

It appeared to us that Picture B shows two women wanting to get registered in marriage. The "male" also has a rather female sounding Chinese name too. Our social worker aquaintance also could not shed any light on the matter. I wonder what the law is? Certainly it can't be, even in Bolehland. Imagine if in the situation of gay males...wouldn't it tantamount to legalizing (in Malaysia) asshole banditry?

Nevertheless, our friend the social worker must be doing some good. Please refer to Picture C.

But for all the successes, I wonder that if a marriage can arrive at this stage whether it is worth saving; bearing in mind that this counselling is "mandatory" after divorce proceedings have been instituted.

Perhaps legal gay marriages will bring down divorce stats in this country. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...

Black and White; White and Black!

Nope! Not a chess game...just J.J.'s brand of humor!

But Prince Cheah is definitely more handsome in black and white, er...white and black!

KEVII Rugby on 10th October, 2008 Slideshow

More photos will be added in as more trigger happy attendees upload their collections. This event appears to be the beginning of more things to come.

Ridhwan's Rokiah

The long anticipated blood test results, after the 19 day B17 protocol came out yesterday. Rokiah is in good spirits and feels well. Quite apart from being frail after the regime, she is determined to be well.

The results remind me of HSC/STPM exam in those days; doing well in some subjects and disappointing in some that had been hoped to improve. As with HSC, it was a dilemma of whether to repeat it or settle for a less desirable option in university. Re-taking did not guarantee better results and another half year would be lost. But the difference here is not about careers; it is about life itself.

Yes, Rokiah's readings were mixed and a couple of markers did increase; one even doubled. Yet, some other markers have improved and her husband Ridhwan is in a quandary. The "form teacher" has analysed the results and has attributed the negative results as being due to the surgery and is confident a re-take will show better results.

Since chemotherapy cannot start yet for various reasons, Ridhwan is comtemplating the next move... these are difficult times.

Trying To Make Sense Of It All (Final?)

When a loved one dies, the pain of those left behind can be eased if they have an acceptable idea of death, from the perception of the soul.

Plato said; "Once free of the body, the soul is able to see truth clearly because it is more pure than before and recalls the pure ideas which it knew before"

Survivors must learn to function again without the physical presence of the person they loved by trusting the departed soul is still with them. Acceptance of loss comes one day at a time. Healing is a progression of mental steps that begins with having faith you are not truly alone.

We have a life contract we made in advance with the departed, and in order to complete this contract it is necessary to rejoin the rest of humanity as an active participant. We will see our love again soon enough.

Death only exchanges one reality for another in the long continuum of existence.

Trying To Make Sense Of It All (IV)

Destiny of Souls by Dr Michael Newton

I have a work in progress of summarizing Dr Newton's first book, "Journey of Souls" and I will finish the task in due course. Picking up his second book, "Destiny of Souls" I noticed the first chapter, "The Spirit World" does a great synopsis job of the previous book. I am therefore reproducing that chapter (without permission) here to serve as a good introduction to one hypothesis of life after death after life.


The Spirit World

At the moment of death, our soul rises out of its host body. If the soul is older and has experience from many former lives, it knows immediately it has been set free and is going home. These advanced souls need no one to greet them. However, most souls I work with are met by guides just outside Earth’s astral plane. A young soul, or a child who has died, may be a little disoriented until someone comes closer to ground level for them. There are souls who choose to remain at the scene of their death for a while. Most wish to leave at once. Time has no meaning in the spirit world. Discarnates who choose to comfort someone who is grieving, or have other reasons to stay near the place of their death for a while, experience no sense of time loss. This becomes now time for the soul as opposed to linear time.

As they move further away from Earth, souls experience an increasingly brilliant light around them. Some will briefly see a grayish darkness and will sense passing through a tunnel or portal. The differences between these two phenomena depend upon the exit speed of the soul, which in turn relates to their experience. The pulling sensation from our guides may be gentle or forceful depending upon the soul’s maturity and capacity for rapid change. In the early stages of their exit all souls encounter a “wispy cloudiness” around them that soon becomes clear, enabling them to look off into a vast distance. This is the moment when the average soul sees a ghostly form of energy coming toward them. This figure may be a loving soul mate or two, but more often than not it is our guide. In circumstances where we are met by a spouse or friend who has passed on before us, our guide is also close by so they can take over the transition process. In all my years of research, I have never had a single subject who was met by a major religious figure such as Jesus or Buddha. Still, the loving essence of the great teachers from Earth is within the personal guides who are assigned to us.

By the time souls become reoriented again to the place they call home, their earthliness has changed. They are no longer quite human in the way we think of a human being with a particular emotional, temperamental and physical makeup. For instance, they don’t grieve about their recent physical death in the way their loved ones will. It is our souls that make us human on earth, but without our bodies we are no longer homo sapiens. The soul has such majesty that it is beyond description. I tend to think of souls as intelligent light forms of energy. Right after death, souls suddenly feel different because they are no longer encumbered by a temporary host body with a brain and central nervous system. Some take longer to adjust than others.

The energy of the soul is able to divide into identical parts, similar to a hologram. It may live parallel lives in other bodies although this is much less common than we read about. However, because of the dual capability of all souls, part of our light energy always remains behind in the spirit world. Thus, it is possible to see your mother upon returning from a life even though she may have died thirty Earth years before and reincarnated again.

Orientation periods with our guides, which take place before joining our cluster group, vary between souls and between different lives for the same soul. This is a quiet time for counseling, with the opportunity to vent up frustrations we have about the life just ended. Orientation is intended to be an initial debriefing session with gentle probing by perceptive, caring teacher-guides.

The meeting may be long or short depending upon the circumstances of what we did or did not accomplish with regard to our life contract. Special karmic issues are also reviewed, although they will be discussed later in minute detail within our soul cluster groups. The returning energy of some souls will not be sent back into their soul group right away. These are the souls who were contaminated by their physical bodies and became involved with evil acts. There is a difference between wrongdoing with no premeditated desire to hurt someone and intentional evil. The degrees of harm to others from mischief to malevolence are carefully evaluated.

Those souls who have been associated with evil are taken to special centers which some clients call “intensive care units.” Here, I am told, their energy is remodeled to make it whole again. Depending upon the nature of their transgressions, these souls could be rather quickly returned to Earth. They might well choose to serve as the victims of others’ evil acts in the next life. Still, if their actions were prolonged and especially cruel over a number of lives, this would denote a pattern of wrongful behavior. Such souls could spend a long while in a solitary spiritual existence, possibly over a thousand Earth years. A guiding principle in the spirit world is that wrongdoing, intentional or unintentional; on the part of all souls will need to be redressed in some form in a future life. This is not considered punishment or even penance as much as an opportunity for karmic growth. There is no hell for souls, except perhaps on Earth.

Some lives are so difficult that the soul arrives home very tired. Despite the energy rejuvenation process initiated by our guides who combine their energy with ours at the gateway, we may still have a depleted energy flow. In these cases, more rest and solitude may be called for rather than celebrations. Indeed, many souls who desire rest receive it before reunification with their groups. Our soul groups may be boisterous or subdued, but they are respectful of what we have gone through during an incarnation. All groups welcome back their friends in their own way with deep love and camaraderie.

Homecoming is a joyous interlude, especially following a physical life where there might not have been much karmic contact with our intimate soul mates. Most of my subjects tell me they are welcomed back with hugs, laughter and much humor, which I find to be a hallmark of life in the spirit world. The really effusive groups who have planned elaborate celebrations for the returning soul may suspend all their other activities. One subject of mine had this to say about his homecoming welcome:

After my last life, my group organized one hell of a party with music, wine, dancing and singing. They arranged everything to look like a classical Roman festival with marble halls, togas and all the exotic furnishings prevalent in our many lives together in the ancient world. Melissa (a primary soul mate) was waiting for me right up front, re-creating the age that I remember her best and looking as radiant as ever.

Soul groups range between three and twenty-five members, with the average having about fifteen. There are times when souls from nearby cluster groups may want to connect with each other. Often this activity involves older souls who have made many friends from other groups with whom they have been associated over hundreds of past lives. Some ten million viewers in the US saw the TV show Sightings, produced by Paramount in 1995, which aired a segment about my work. Those who watched this show about life after death may remember one of my clients, by the name of Colleen, who spoke about a session we had together. She described returning to the spirit world after a former life to find a spectacular seventeenth-century full dress ball in progress. My subject saw over a hundred people who came to celebrate her return. A time and place she had loved was lavishly reproduced so Colleen could begin the process of renewal in style.

Thus, homecoming can take place in two types of settings. A few souls might briefly meet a returning soul at the gateway and then leave in favor of a guide who takes them through some preliminary orientation. More commonly, the welcoming committee waits until the soul actually returns to their spirit group. This group may be isolated in a classroom, gathered around the steps of a temple, sitting in a garden, or the returning could encounter many groups in a study hall atmosphere. Souls who pass by other clusters on the way to their own berth often remark that other souls with whom they have been associated in past lives will look up and acknowledge their return with a smile or wave.

How a subject views their group cluster setting is based upon the soul’s state of advancement, although memories of a schoolroom atmosphere are always very clear. In the spirit world, educational placement depends on the level of soul development. Simple because a soul has been incarnating on Earth since the Stone Age is no guarantee of high attainment. In my lectures I often remark about a client who took 4,000 years of past lives finally to conquer jealousy. I can report he is not a jealous person today, yet he has made little progress with fighting his own intolerance. It takes some students longer to get through certain lessons, just as in earthly classrooms. On the other hand, all highly advanced souls are old souls in terms of both knowledge and experience.

In Journey of Souls, I broadly classified souls as beginner, intermediate and advanced and gave case examples of each while explaining there are fine nuances of development among these categories. Generally, the composition of a group of souls is made up of beings at about the same level of advancement, although they have their individual strengths and shortcomings. These attributes give the group balance. Souls assist one another with the cognitive aspects of absorbing information from life experiences as well as reviewing the way they handled the feelings and emotions of their host bodies directly related to those experiences. Every aspect of a life is dissected, even to the extent of reverse role playing in the group, to bring greater awareness. By the time souls reach the intermediate levels they begin to specialize in those major areas of interest where certain skills have been demonstrated. I will discuss these in more depth as we get further along in other chapters.

One very meaningful aspect of my research has been the discovery of energy colors displayed by souls in the spirit world. These colors relate to a soul’s state of advancement. This information, gathered slowly over many years, has been one indicator of progress during client assessments and also serves to identify other souls my subjects see around them while in a trance state. I found that typically, pure white denotes a younger soul and with advancement soul energy becomes more dense, moving into orange, yellow, green and finally the blue ranges. In addition to these center core auras, there are subtle mixtures of halo colors within every group that relate to the character aspects of each soul.

For want of a better system, I have classified soul development as moving from a level I beginner through various learning stages to that of a master at level VI. These greatly advanced souls are seen as having a deep indigo color. I have no doubt even higher levels exist, but my knowledge of them is restricted because I only receive reports from people who are still incarnating. Frankly, I am not fond of the term “level” to identify soul placement because this label clouds the diversity of development attained by souls at any particular stage. Despite these misgivings, it is my subjects who use “level” to describe where they are on the ladder of learning. They are also quite modest about accomplishments. Regardless of my assessment, no client is inclined to state they are an advanced soul. Once out of hypnosis, with a fully conscious self-gratifying mind in control, they are less reticent.

While in a superconscious state during deep hypnosis, my subjects tell me that in the spirit world no soul is looked down upon as having less value than any other soul. We are all in a process of transformation to something greater than our current state of enlightenment. Each of us is considered uniquely qualified to make some contribution toward the whole, no matter how hard we are struggling with our lessons. If this were not true we would not have been created in the first place.

In my discussions of colors of advancement, levels of development, classrooms, teachers and students it would be easy to assume the ambiance of the spirit world is one of hierarchy. This conclusion would be quite wrong, according to all my clients. If anything, the spirit world is hierarchical in mental awareness. We tend to think of organizational authority on Earth as represented by power struggles, turf wars and the controlling use of a rigid set of rules within structure. There certainly is compassion, harmony, ethics and morality far beyond what we practice on Earth. In my experience the spirit world also has a far-reaching centralized personnel department for soul assignments. Yet there is a value system here of overwhelming kindness, tolerance, patience and absolute love. When reporting to me about such things, my subjects are humbled by the process.

I have an old college friend in Tucson who is an iconoclast and has resisted authority all his life, which is an attitude I can empathize with myself. My friend suspects the souls of my clients have been “brainwashed” into believing they have control over their destiny. He believes authority of any kind- even spiritual authority- cannot exist without corruption and the abuse of privilege. My research reveals too much order upstairs, which is not to his liking.

Nevertheless, all my subjects believe they have had a multitude of choices in their past and that this will continue into the future. Advancement through the taking of personal responsibility does not involve dominance or status ranking but rather recognition of potential. They see integrity and personal freedom everywhere in their life between lives.

In the spirit world we are not forced to reincarnate or participate in group projects. If souls want solitude they can have it. If they don’t want to advance in their assignments, this too is honored. One subject told me, “I have skated through many easy lives and I like it that way because I haven’t really wanted to work hard. Now that’s going to change. My guide says, ‘we are ready when you are.’” In fact, there is so much free will that if we are not ready to leave Earth’s astral plane after death, for a variety of personal reasons, our guides will allow us to stay around until such time as we are prepared to go home.

I hope this book will show that we have many choices both in and out of the spirit world. What is very evident to me about these choices is the intense desire of most souls to prove themselves worthy of the trust placed in them. We are expected to make mistakes in this process. The effort of moving toward a greater goodness and a conjunction with the Source that created us is the prime motivator of souls. Souls have feelings of humility at having been given the opportunity to incarnate in physical form.

I have been asked many times if my subjects see the Source of Creation during their sessions. In my introduction I said I could go only so far upriver toward the Source because of the limitations of working with people who are still incarnating. Advanced subjects talk about the time of conjunction when they will join the “Most Sacred Ones.” In this sphere of dense purple light there is an all-knowing Presence. What all this means I cannot say, but I do know a Presence is felt when we go before our council of Elders. Once or twice between lives we visit this group of higher beings who are a step or two above our teacher-guides. With this book, I will go into greater detail about or visitations with those masters who are as close as I can come to the Creator. This is because it is here where and even higher source of divine knowledge is experienced by the soul. My clients call this energy force “the Presence.”

The council is not a tribunal of judges nor a courtroom where souls appear to be tried and sentenced for wrongdoing, although I must admit that once in a while someone will tell me they feel going in front of the council is like being sent to the principal’s office in school. Members of the council want to talk to us about our mistakes and what we can do to correct negative behaviour in the next life.

This is the place where considerations for the right body in our next life begin. As the time approaches for rebirth, we go to a space where a number of bodies are reviewed that might meet our goals. We have a chance to look into the future here and actually test out different bodies before making a choice. Souls voluntarily select less than perfect bodies and difficult lives to address karmic debts or to work on different aspects of a lesson they have had trouble with in the past. Most souls accept the bodies offered to them in the selection room but a soul can reject what is offered and even delay reincarnating. Then, too, a soul might ask to go to a physical planet other than Earth for awhile. If we accept the new assignment, we are often sent to a preparation class to remind us of certain signposts and clues in the life to come, especially at those moments when primary soulmates come into our lives.

Finally, when the time comes for our return, we say a temporary goodbye to our friends and are escorted to the space of embarkation for the trip to earth. Souls join their assigned hosts in the womb of a baby’s mother sometime after the third month of pregnancy so they will have a sufficiently evolved brain to work with before term. As part of the fetal state they are still able to think as immortal souls while they get used to brain circuitry and the alter ego of their host. After birth, an amnesiac memory block sets in and souls meld their immortal character with the temporary human mind to produce a combination of traits for a new personality.

I use a systematic approach to reach the soul mind by employing a series of exercises for people in the early stages of hypnotic regression. This procedure is designed to gradually sharpen my subject’s memories of their past and prepare them to analyze critically the images they will see of life in the spirit world. After the usual intake interview, I place the client in hypnosis very quickly. It is the deepening that is my secret. Over long periods of experimentation, I have come to realize that having a client in the normal alpha state of hypnosis is not adequate enough to reach the superconscious state of the soul mind. For this I must take the subject into deeper theta ranges of hypnosis.

In terms of methodology, I may spend up to an hour with long visualizations of forest or seashore images. Then I take the subject into their childhood years. I ask detailed questions about such things as the furniture in their house at age twelve, their favorite article of clothing at age ten, the toy they loved most at age seven and their earliest memories as a child between ages three and two. We do all this before I take the client down into their mother’s womb for more questions and then into the most immediate past life for a short review. By the time the client has passed through the death scene of that life and reached the gateway to the spirit world, my bridge is complete. Continual hypnosis, deepening over the first hour, enhances the subject’s disengagement from their earthly environment. They have also been conditioned to respond in detail to an intensive question and answer interview of their spiritual life. This will take us another two hours.

Subjects who come out of trance after mentally returning home have a look of awe on their faces that is far more profound than if they had just experienced a straight past life regression. For example, a client told me, “The spirit has a diversity and complex fluid quality beyond my ability adequately to interpret.” Many former clients write me about how viewing their immortality changed their lives. Here is a sample of one letter:

I have gained an indescribable sense of joy and freedom from learning my true identity. The amazing thing is that this knowledge was in my mind all the time. Seeing my nonjudgmental master teachers left me in a glowing state, the insight that came to me was that the only thing of true importance in this material life is the way we live and how we treat other people. The circumstances of our life mean nothing compared to our compassion and acceptance of others. I now have a knowing rather than a feeling about why I am here and where I am going after death.

I present my findings involving the sixty-seven cases and numerous quotes in this book as a reporter and a messenger. Before I begin every lecture to the public, I explain to my audiences that what I have to say are my truths about our spiritual life. There are many doorways to the truth. My truths come from a cumulation of great wisdom from multitudes of people who have graced my life as clients over many years. If I make statements that go against your preconceptions, faith, or personal philosophy, please take what fits well for you and discard the rest.

Hobson's Choice?

A dear friend is cancer stricken. He was diagnosed a few weeks ago and the trauma for him is unimaginable. In order not to have to repeat himself this IT savvy buddy has opted to blog regularly about his condition.

As with Randolph’s Rokiah he was introduced to B17 and has undergone a full 19 days of the protocol. His first blood test results came out yesterday; he believes that the last two and a half weeks could have been futile. His cancer markers have gone up and he is seemingly between a rock and a very hard place. Time is of the essence and no one really knows how much sand is in the hour glass.

He went to see an oncologist today and chemotherapy is the obvious option since the tumor at the pancreas is too dangerous for surgical removal at this juncture.

So how does one advise him? We don’t actually. We can only give our opinion and all major decisions rightly belong to him. In the final analysis, they are all merely opinions…regardless that the opinions come from the heart or from years of medical practice. If this scourge were fully understood, it would not exist anyway. We would not be faced with so few options.

This dear friend is a perfectly rational man and sometimes I feel he is too rational. He would have considered all options available and weighed time against measures. No one can imagine what goes on in his mind and the perceptions that result. He has perceived that his decision slightly more than 19 days ago has not achieved his desired results, and has decided to try the other two options available i.e. chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Hopefully a radiation bombarded tumor will be reduced to make surgery a viable option. My fear is that his decision will shut the door to a more effective alternative treatment though I have no right to agree or disagree; I cannot fault him for his perceptions.

It is all so easy for me to be typing all this while he remains in his solitary world wrecked with uncertainty and urgency. Yet I have seen too much to want to leave him to himself and absolve myself of all moral responsibility. I have to offer him another perception.

The funny thing about perception is that it is personal-to-holder. I have always believed that justification drives all of us and how we perceive determines how we justify. My dear CK, allow me to show you another perspective.

and...NEVER GIVE UP!!!

SAUDARA ANWAR BIN IBRAHIM (II)

On Merdeka Day this year I blogged about Anwar Bin Ibrahim and the following post by Syed Akbar Ali in his blog OutSyed The Box has the same title. I think it is worth a read. Why do so many people say the same things about Saudara Anwar Bin Ibrahim?


Saudara Anwar Bin Ibrahim
By Syed Akbar Ali

Note to the supporters of Anwar Ibrahim : You may not fully agree with my comments here. Feel free to throw any brickbats at me. We are all fighting for the freedom of thought and speech, which seems to be a controlled item in this First World nation of ours. I will respect your right to free speech, so please do respect mine too. It is not wrong to have differences of opinion, it is wrong to impose our opinions on others. Thank you.

A few months ago I suffered the ignominy of having my name and faced splashed on the front pages of the newspapers. I had my '15 minutes of fame'. But after that event, I received phone calls and e mails from some old school friends whom I have not seen in over 30 years. So we met up and had a reunion and compared hairlines and waistlines. I also discovered that my friends were all strong supporters of Anwar Ibrahim - to a man.

One of them kept reminding me of September 16th - the promised date when Anwar would form the Government. Then Sept 16th came and went. Nothing happened. My friend Lim was disappointed. In fact thousands of people who were hoping for Anwar Ibrahim to change the Government were quite disappointed. Now Anwar says that the promised 'change of Government' was just a concept. To keep the embers burning he has promised to change the Government by the end of the year.

The reality of the situation indicates otherwise. With the announcement by Abdullah Badawi that he will not be running for the position of party president at the next UMNO Assembly, it seems that Dato Seri Najib Tun Razak is well on his way to becoming party president and also Prime Minister of the land. Many people (and not just UMNO members) would like to see the country getting organised and moving along. But the March 8th elections have thrown up uncertainty which will remain. Everyone is adrift in uncharted waters.

In practical terms, Najib's ascension implies that most of the BN members of Parliament will be staying put and not consider any offers to change horses midstream. Now the papers report talk about a Pakatan MP switching over to the BN. If the Najib-Muhyuddin team consolidates its position in UMNO quickly it will be that much more difficult for Anwar to get the coveted 31 MPs to switch sides. There is also the matter of Anwar's Court case which has to be resolved.

I first saw Saudara Anwar Ibrahim in December 1982 in Columbus, Ohio. I was about to start my freshman year at Purdue University in Indiana. The Malaysian Islamic Students Study Group or MISSG had organised their annual meeting in the United States. The MISSG was a pro ABIM outfit. ABIM was of course the Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia which had been founded by Sanusi Junid (of UMNO fame), Fadhil Noor the late president of PAS and Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar had been invited to address the assembly.

When Anwar addressed the crowd, two things struck me. Firstly, clearly he was an orator - he was able to mouth many words. To be an orator, volume is necessary. You must speak a lot.

Sarah Palin does not make much sense, but that should not preclude her from being labelled an orator. However she fails the 'volume' requirement too - she does not say much. If she becomes Vice President she will be just one heart beat away from becoming President of the United States.

Secondly when Anwar spoke I saw graduate students with wives and children in tow standing up on tables and shouting 'Allahu Akbar'. Now 26 years later when I watch my favorite History Channel and see black and white World War 2 reruns of mesmerized masses, it connects with what I observed in Ohio 26 years ago : that the human voice indeed has the power to move the masses.

The second time I saw Anwar was much closer - at his house in Damansara in the early 90s. He was beginning his rapid rise in UMNO. It was a buka puasa function and I had driven my old friend Dr Kassim Ahmad there. By this time I had been a banker for sometime and had also become quite aware of Anwar Ibrahim's religious credentials (I always use the word Islam very carefully).

By this time Anwar had been over ten years in UMNO. He had served in the Ministry of Sports, Ministry of Agriculture, as Minister of Education, Minister of Finance and finally Deputy Prime Minister. I recall that during his tenure in the Sports Ministry there was a strike by some football players when they were told that they would have to wear long track bottoms. Since it was not recommended for Malay men to wear shorts which exposed the knees, there was a move to get Malay sportsmen to wear ankle length track bottoms. This was not a practical idea and hence was not well received.

Then when Anwar was Minister of Agriculture I recall there was a small crisis involving fishermen and the payment of their subsidies. When he was Minister of Education the school holidays were changed, school children were burdened with carrying heavy school bags and something called KBSR was introduced in our schools. I cannot explain these things because I never understood them. But I am qualified to comment on this because my sons entered Primary School in 1995 and 1997.

During Anwar's time a new language was also introduced in Malaysia. It was called Bahasa Baku. Fortunately Bahasa Baku was only spoken in some parts of the country mainly in the studios of TV3. Bahasa Baku became extinct about a year after the dinosaur movie 'The Lost World : Jurassic Park' was screened in 1997.

I remember Anwar's Cheshire grin on TV when British Premier Margaret Thatcher proclaimed him 'the best Finance Minister in the world' during her visit here in the mid 90s. To this day I am trying to decipher why a fully briefed British Premier would say that.

And over 1997-98, I personally witnessed Anwar's famed acumen as Finance Minister. The Asian Financial Crisis was sinking countries around the region, including us. Anwar's remedy was to listen to the IMF formula which none of the Europeans and Americans are following now to get out of their present crisis.

I was a banker at that time and winced with horror when overnite interest rates climbed into the double digits and our Ringgit kept sinking. My borrowing clients were being choked out of their businesses. A friend of mine, who is a highly successful businessman now, collapsed physically under the weight of high interest rates and the plunging Ringgit at that time. Many people just cannot understand how close our country came to disaster and possible chaos and street riots.

I was the only columnist who wrote a strong criticism against the high interest rate policy in The Sun newspaper, which was rewarded by a curt phone call from Bank Negara to Dato Ahmad Rejal Arbee, my editor at The Sun at that time. Then Dr Mahathir's currency and capital controls came into being which managed the economic transition (menangani perubahan) without chaos or bloodshed.

To my reckoning, even from before (Ohio 1982) until now, Anwar has never espoused a vision, a dream, an economic policy or a way forward for the nation. I just cannot identify any policy or grand idea with him. I believe the simplest reason for this is because he never had one.

A person who aspires to become a leader must have ideas. And in our so very complicated country with its jurang perbezaan Malays, fast forward Chinese, fractured Indians and so many others, we need really good ideas and brave leadership to move everyone forward. Rolling the Rs (kerrrrrrrupshen), mouthing arabic sounds (madani, insani, etc) will just not cut the cake.

Anwar, or any other aspiring leader, must have useful and practical ideas that work. (Decision making over allocation of Government projects cannot be counted as a leadership skill). And for a person to have useful and practical ideas he must be knowledgeable. He must read, absorb and take notes. Reading Shakespeare may not achieve that.

Last year Anwar Ibrahim was invited to give a talk at a hotel in Petaling Jaya. The topic was the Malaysian economy. I went quite eagerly with a friend to listen to what he had to say. We came away quite disapppointed. Other than rolling his Rs (again kerrrrrrrupshen) he did not have any grand ideas at all for the Malaysian economy.

Of course putting a stop to the corruption and being more transparent are good things to do from the day before yesterday. This is a major cancer that is choking our country and it must be excised out completely. But is Anwar really the man who can tackle this job? But that alone is just not enough. We need a new blueprint to replace our obviously failed system. The systemic failure is becoming manifest now but Anwar Ibrahim has suffered a lack of ideas for the past 25 years.

Devoid of grand ideas, Anwar has had no choice but to jump on whatever bandwagon was or is current. In his student days it was starvation even though there were no recorded cases of anyone having died of starvation in Malaysia in a long time.

Then in the years after the Iranian Revolution it was ABIM and religion. While he was in Government, this continued for a time into 'masyarakat madani', 'insan kamil' and so on. There was the period of fraternity with the hicks and rednecks from the Yew-nited States, Dame Ironbottom and others. Finally there was the charge of the Light Brigade against kronyism and kerrrrrrrupshen. And of course Reformasi.

I listened to Anwar campaigning during the March 8th Elections. A lawyer friend of mine said that Anwar was now a changed man. But the one glaring absence in Anwar's platform was and still is a coherent, well thought and well articulated scheme of things for the future of the country. The way forward for all of us Malaysians - without leaving anyone out of the equation.

A road map. A blue print. Good and practical ideas that will reassure the Malays and bumiputras and elevate them, which will also give the Chinese the space they so need to do what they are capable of achieving and which will elevate the poorer Indians to an equal footing with everyone else in the country, which will get that young girl with the terribly yellow teeth in that restaurant in Semporna a life - and maybe an education too. There is none forthcoming from Anwar Ibrahim.

But the terrible truth is, so far no one else from the Government or the Opposition has any good ideas either about how to move the country forward quickly. If the Government were doing a great job, they would not have lost five States and the two thirds majority. It is really time to hear the alarm clock ringing.When there are no real ideas people will ultimately see through the oratory. It may be a long time coming but it will eventually happen. Sometimes it can happen like a 'Kodak moment'.

A Kodak moment refers to a sudden event or situation which is also perfect to be photographed. For example, imagine tourists riding in a boat with their cameras ready to shoot. Suddenly a huge sea eagle swoops out of the sky and catches a fish, almost slow motion style, right in front of their cameras. Everyone gets the perfect picture. That would be a Kodak moment. Unexpected and momentous - a revelation.

Quite sadly my old schoolfriend Lim and many other supporters of Anwar Ibrahim, had a 'Kodak moment' on September 16th. Then again another one on September 26th. Nothing happened on those two days. Things just went on at their normal boring pace. The Saviour was not come. They would have to wait another day for the Mahdi.

The DAP and PAS were not too carried away by Anwar's oratory over this one. However they too faced credibility issues with their own supporters over the 'no change' in Government. Just like Sarah Palin's comment about Russia's proximity to Alaska making her an expert on foreign affairs, this is another event they would sooner put on the backburner. The DAP and PAS tread lightly now when it comes to talk of changing the Government.

Postponing issues have become trademark Anwar. And perhaps there will also be other 'Kodak moments'. It would appear that Anwar is also running out of identifiable enemies. Abdullah Badawi has never been targeted by Anwar as his enemy. In any case Badawi is exiting the scene.

There is much public support for Anwar as a future leader. But this support is more derived from exasperation with the endemic corruption and bigotry which infests the country. The push factors are significant.

If Anwar, or any other aspiring leader, hopes to make real changes in the country then they must have a clear and simple idea about how to make this country a first rate, First World nation in double quick time. And everyone must have a stake in this dream. The reality is that it can be done and well within a space of ten years.

But suggestions like opening up the membership rolls of political parties, unity Governments and such expose the simplicity of the thought processes in the country. There is a feeling that if we can do just this, then everything will be hunky dory fine.

But how can multi racial membership rolls in political parties or unity Governments put an extra RM200 every month in the pockets of the ordinary man without increasing inflation in the country? But the simple fact is, this can be achieved almost overnite if we abolish APs for the import of cars (or sell APs for a nominal RM1.00 from the Sports Toto outlets).

The resulting lower car prices will save at least RM200.00 from monthly car instalments. Considering that even a university graduate (bumiputra) earns a starting salary of about RM1000 - RM1200 a month, that is adding 16%-20% to his disposable income. Where is the political will or the common sense to do this? If not done soon, it will eventually be prompted by the ballot.

Other suggestions like making the nation a full fledged meritocracy overnite may end up burning down the barn and the farm. In the present circumstances such ideas are simplistic too. But prolonging unworkable ideas like the New Economic Policy will not put out the embers that are smouldering. A practical workable balance must be achieved. So far Anwar Ibrahim does not show this promise.

The Amazing Unfolding Continues...

I posted earlier a short narration about a sick woman who was in a hopeless situation until fate intervened. Rokiah is having 4th stage colon cancer and today (since 1st October) is still undergoing a 19 day treatment protocol using Vitamin B17 as the main ingredient. I had wanted to wait until after the 19 days to blog details about this heartwarming story but since her husband Randolph @ Ridhwan has a blog, he is documenting the "amazing unfolding" as it is happening now. This is from Ridhwan:


Its Called B17
October 10, 2008 by randolph

I know a lot about B17 and its controversial past. I have heard about the Oasis of Hope hospital in Mexico. I know who Dr. Ernesto Contreras was. But I never expected B17 to be available in Malaysia. That was until I met Cheah, totally by accident, one lonely night in the hospital.

B17 has very likely saved a life.

I am a rational, educated individual. I do not believe in magical cures. I do not believe in voodoo, black or white magic or using helmets to knock the devil out of one’s head. I do not think too highly of bomohs or any medicine man promising a quick cure.

But I believe in B17 because I have personally witnessed, on a day-to-day basis, the almost magical improvement in the health of a person suffering from stage 4 colon cancer.

http://www.worldwithoutcancer.org.uk/
http://www.oasisofhope.com/


The Taxing Timeline
October 10, 2008 by randolph

The Ordeal Begins…..

September 4: The long journey from Johor Baru to the hospital near Subang.September 5: Major colon surgery carried out.
September 13: Discharged from hospital.
September 19: Re-admitted, because of wound infection - fluids discharging from wound.
September 20: 2nd operation in a month to re-stitch the wound.
September 25: Developed breathing problems, doctors are concerned. Returned to ICU and will remain there for another 3 1/2 days. Heart rate: 128-130. Oxygen level (with oxygen aid): 96%
September 28: Back to a normal ward, breathing only slightly improved.
September 29: Doctors express grave concern over her continued gasping for air. One even opined that if the breathing gets worse, everybody should be prepared for the worst.
September 30: With almost no medical options left should the breathing become worse, I made a decision, with the approval of her three doctors, to start B17.

There’s Always Another Option…..

October 1: Hari Raya. Started 19-day B17 protocol/regime.
October 2: Breathing improves. Respiratory doctor expresses surprise at her recovery.
October 3: Heart rate drops from 130 to 110. Swelling in arms disappears.
October 4: Breathing without any oxygen aid. Heart rate: 105, oxygen (on her own steam): 98%.
October 5: All tubes removed except urinal tube (drip tube, oxygen tube, intravenous feeding tube).
October 6: Last tube removed (urinal tube). Stand-by surgeon writes “miracle” in medical log.
October 7: Heart rate: 100, oxygen 98-100%. Starts to walk, with assistance.
October 8: Swollen legs (from Sept 1) subsides completely. Continues with walking exercises.
October 9: Primary surgeon says she can be discharged by October 11. I chose to let her stay one more day in hospital, so that the physio can continue with the walking exercises.
October 12: Discharged.


The Pianist in an Orchestra
October 10, 2008 by randolph

The B17 protocol/regime is much more complex than just swallowing apricot seeds. A pianist is usually the highest paid musician in an orchestra, the star of the ensemble. But without the other musicians in the orchestra, the music is not complete. While B17 is the star of the protocol, the treatment is strongly supported by a highly skilled “orchestra”, made up of 20-25 “musicians” - either a vitamin, supplement or nutrition. Together, they work together to finish off any cancer cell in the body.


The Proof is in the Blood
October 10, 2008 by randolph

How does one know whether the B17 protocol/regime works?

Simple, no rocket science here. Take a blood test before the treatment starts. Look out for the cancer markers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumor_marker). After the treatment, take another blood test. Compare the two. There are only three possible scenarios - situation has become worse, situation is unchanged and situation has improved.

Oh by the way, there’s a fourth scenario. All the markers are back to normal. And you know what that means.


“How did this happen?”
October 11, 2008 by randolph

There are three doctors (and two others with less major roles) who have been attending to Rokiah. The first is the primary surgeon who performed the colon operation. The second is the young surgeon who replaced the primary surgeon when he was on leave for 6 days. The third is the lady respiratory doctor.

It was the young surgeon who on September 30 pulled me aside and told me that Rokiah’s condition was very serious and that “she may not have much time left.” This same surgeon wrote in her medical log a few days later (after the B17 protocol started) that “its a miracle.”

Today, on the eve of her discharge, the doctors made what would be their last visit to Rokiah’s now too familiar hospital bed. The first, the lady doctor, came by when Rokiah was having her breakfast. Besides the usual “how are you today” greeting, she also smiled and knowingly remarked “It’s a miracle, you know.”

The second visitor was the primary surgeon. He came to the ward when the nurse was helping give Rokiah her 9am B17 “medication.” (The B17 regime starts at 7am and ends at 10pm - all in, a total of 9 feedings.) His remark? Nodding to the nurse, the surgeon said “Yes, give her more of that stuff!”

Is this really a miracle?

Time will tell.


Now Read This!
October 10, 2008 by randolph

From the Oasis of Hope hospital:

One of my favorite board games ever is Risk. The object of the game is to conquer the world. You place your armies strategically around the board trying to capture territories held by opposing players, all the while seeking to protect those that you already possess. On the surface, it is a fascinating game of strategy, timing, and quick thinking. Beneath the surface, however, is an even more fascinating game of alliances.

Much like the game of Monopoly, the game of Risk has a reputation for dragging on for days. This is due to the unseen aspect of the game I mentioned. As a player, I noticed that whenever an opponent began to gain momentum, gobbling up surrounding territories, an unspoken alliance was formed between the other players in an attempt to restore balance to the board. If your attempt to win was too heavy-handed, you were sure to face the combined efforts of the rest of the players. Needless to say, heavy-handed attempts to rule the world rarely won the game. Just ask Hitler.

Cancer is heavy-handed. There is nothing subtle at all about the presence of a malignant tumor in your kidney or lung. Cancer makes no attempt to veil its threat. It is a disease that gathers momentum quickly and attacks with frightening ferocity. Only a concerted and combined effort can repel such an attack. This is the principle behind the Metabolic Therapy my father pioneered.

My father believed that to defeat cancer, it was necessary to attack it from every possible angle. He understood the importance of both direct and indirect approaches. The foundation of the Metabolic Therapy is its multi-faceted approach. Yes, we do attack the tumor, but we also stimulate the immune system and address causal factors. Our total care approach requires the patient’s participation. Cancer treatment is not a spectator’s sport. The patient must be prepared for the fight. We go through a process of structuring a patient for success by providing the necessary resources to face the threat at the physical, emotional, and spiritual levels. There is no question that the alliance between body, mind, and spirit can even the playing field against cancer. In chapters that follow, I will take you through our newest therapies as well as mind/spirit medicine but let me begin with the foundational program my father designed to dismantle cancer’s strongholds. In this chapter, I will share how we can sensitize cancer to treatment, attack the tumor, cut off its supply lines, and take out cancer’s transportation system.

Let´s start with sensitizing the tumor. Did you know that cancer defends itself against attacks? Tumors can become resistant to chemotherapy, radiation or whatever else you throw at it. It would make sense that if you could dismantle cancer’s defenses, you could then take it out, right? What are the ways that cancer defends itself? One way is that tumors encapsulate themselves with blood vessels that are so restricted that antitumor agents can’t get through. Another way is that tumors amass high concentrations of a substance called glutathione. Glutathione is the element that makes tumors resistant to treatment. Is there a way to lower the levels of glutathione in tumors so that they would become sensitized to anticancer treatments? The answer is yes. For glutathione to be produced in the cells, it needs another substance called cysteine. Please continue with me on this trail that it took many years to identify by top researchers. Is there a way to lower the level of cysteine? Yes. Cyanide will deplete the supply of cysteine. But, isn’t cyanide a poison? Cyanide is toxic to our body but it will not make us sick in very low doses derived from a whole food source. You eat cyanide-rich food everyday if you eat apricots, pineapples, apples, or any of the other thousand cyanide-toting foods found in nature. The cyanide in these foods is present in a nutrient called amygdalin. Amygdalin can release cyanide in malignant cells resulting in depleting the supply of cysteine, thus diminishing the intracellular concentration of glutathione. This will sensitize the tumors to antitumor treatments including chemotherapy, Ozone therapy, and UV light.

We also use amygdalin to attack the tumor. The cyanide realeased by amygdalin is one of the best killers of malignant cells as well. Amygdalin has a double punch. It lowers cancers resistance to treatment and it releases cyanide to kill cancer cells directly. If you wish to read the technical explanation of how these two functions of amygdalin occur, please refer to appendices I and II and the end of the book.

If amygdalin can be so helpful, why aren’t more cancer treatment centers using it? The first argument is that it can be toxic because it contains cyanide. The second argument is that it doesn’t work.

Let’s talk about amygdalin’s toxicity first. We have used amygdalin with tens of thousands of patients since the early 1960s. You might say that we know a thing or two about amygdalin which is also known as laetrile and vitamin B17. The cyanide released by amygdalin does not reach toxic levels that can harm or even discomfort patients. But don’t accept my word as the only proof. A famous researcher named June de Spain conducted a laetrile toxicity study that was published in The Little Cyanide Cookbook (Am. Media). She took three groups of rats. Group one was fed white bread. Group two was fed whole wheat bread. Group three was fed laetrile. After three months, 75 percent of rats that were eating white bread were dead. The white bread survivors were at death’s door. The rats that were eating whole wheat bread were in good shape. The rats who were eating laetrile were all alive and in the best condition of the three groups. The conclusion of this FDA sponsored trial was that, “white bread is 70 times more toxic than laetrile.”

No, laetrile/amygdalin presents no risk of toxicity.

What about the argument that laetrile is not effective? We have conducted several prospective clinical trials that demonstrated that amygdalin is quite effective in the combined treatment of the most common and deadly cancers including inoperable lung cancer, advanced prostate cancer, stage IV breast cancer, and colon cancer with liver metastasis. We submitted these studies to several medical journals but they were rejected. Some editors cited that our studies did not have control groups. But it is scientifically valid to conduct a study and compare results with similar studies published in medical journals. That is what we did but we were still denied publication. Other editors stated that our study was not designed properly and that the conclusion was not definitive. Others were quite candid. They rejected the studies because the use of amygdalin was too controversial. I think the third group was honest and I appreciated getting a straight answer from them.

Read the rest of the article here:

http://oasisofhope.com/cancerhospital/dismantling-cancer/a-combined-effort.html


If You Can Treat It, Why Cure It?
September 21, 2008 by randolph

When someone close to me was diagnosed with colon cancer very recently, I started to research on cancer. I went to the world’s greatest library - the internet, to look up the current cancer treatments available, and more importantly, the alternative treatments/cures available. It is unfortunate that in this day and age, the obsession with making money has made it confusing for a person looking for a real solution to these illnesses. One can never be sure whether the offered “cure” is real or just another money-making venture.

One very disturbing fact I came across was that the giant pharmaceutical companies, sometimes hand-in-hand with the government, have gone to great extremes to block cures that are not only genuine, but tested to be effective. Why? Because these big companies cannot patent and make money from these cures, since the sources of these cures originate from what God, through nature, has given us.

One such cure originated from Germany and is called the Budwig Diet or Budwig Protocol. I will let the following article do the talking for me. The article was written by an individual who like me, also wanted to know more about Budwig and credit goes to this person for the research done.

If this article has helped someone you love, let me know!

Randolph

Read the article on Budwig Diet...

KEVII Rugby - 30 Years Of Memories

Yesterday, I was in Taiping for a reunion of former King Edward VII School rugby players from 1978 and later. It was an inaugural event held after 30 years of being one of the kingpins of schools rugby in Malaysia. The beginning was in 1978 it all boiled down to one man, Mr Yiew Siew Seng. Last night we honored coach Mr Yiew Siew Seng (1978 to 1986) and current coach Ahmad Din (since 1994).

I was part of the 1978 team and the small group that put together this reunion over a 4 week period. Led by Tiger Jalil, the rest of the guys are Tigers Tan Poh Hong, Cheng Sun Huat, Ramli, Mariappan and Hamdan Azmir. We knew from the initial response that it would be a success. At the dinner, the sight of more than one hundred and twenty Tigers dressed in similar jerseys with personalized jersey numbers, sharing great camaraderie and memories made all those late night planning meetings worthwhile.

There were some I had not met in 30 years! A few hundred photographs must have been taken as former teammates sought to relive old memories and create new ones. The spirit of the evening made me glad I agreed to be part of an effort that earlier, many must have only thought of but never acted upon.

The decision to have the 70s and early 80s jersey reproduced proved to be fantastic; wearing, and seeing everyone wearing one somehow rolled back the years! The personalized numbers on the back definitely added to the pride of belonging to an exclusive group of KEVII students. The game epitomized the school!

Mr Yiew shared his success formula in his speech. He said, in 1978 he knew he had material for the makings of a championship side but what the players lacked was belief! We all know so well how he went about instilling that belief. I am glad he confirmed what I posted earlier about my lesson learnt from rugby in school; "What did I learn from all the above? I learned one of life's valuable lessons: No matter what or who you are up against, prepare well and have confidence in your own abilities. Virtually nothing is impossible to those who believe!".

More photos will be put up here as soon as I receive them from owners of the many cameras last night! In the meantime, these are from my phone-cam:

An Amazing Unfolding...

I had heard of her about 3 weeks ago when I met her devoted husband in a hospital. I met her for the first time yesterday (7th October 2008) and the following pictures tell the story. Her husband's own words in italics blue:

Sept 18, R waiting for re-admission to hospital. After operation on Sept 5 and discharge on Sept 13, wound did not heal well. She went back to the operation theater for re-stitching of the wound on Sept 20.

Sept 20, After the re-stitching operation. 5 days later, things began to go wrong. While colon was healing and the re-stitched wound was healing (slowly), she started having breathing problems (very fast breathing). Went back to ICU for 3.5 days. Breathing did not get much better after transfer to normal ward on Sept 28. Doctors say she would not survive should breathing get worse. I decided to start her on XXX in hospital on first day of Hari Raya, October 1.

October 5, the fifth day of XXX. Her breathing had already returned to normal on Oct 3, the third day. You can see that all the tubes (oxygen tube, intravenous feeding tube) except urinal tube have been removed. Her oxygen level is now 97-100%, like you and me.

October 7, the seventh out of nineteen days XXX regime. Every tube removed from body. Self-explanatory.

This is an amazing story that is unfolding . I will not say much now but maybe in 2 weeks time.

Latest: 8th October. R is already on her feet and walking.

Here comes the spin!!!

I was just waiting for something like this; the counter-attack with the opposing tack. We now have blogger(s) under blogname, "Demi Negara" (negara siapa?) who I am sure will attract lots of readers (and like-minded "commentators"). One thing is for sure, this blog does not need hits to make money.

I like to use the phrase, "preaching to the choir" but this apologist blog is good read; if only to know what songs the other church choir is singing.

I must say, the latest post below sounds rather convincing except for the fact that the sweeping result of GE12 on 8th of March wipes away all his arguments. I wonder which group I will fall under but please read:


Unraveling the RPK Mystique

Much has been said about the ISA detention of Raja Petra Kamarudin. Over the past decade, the 58 year old has emerged from obscurity to become a sort of cult figure for some Malaysians, and his detention has become a cause célèbre for “the quest for justice and inequality.” RPK is also perceived by many to be some sort of figurehead and rallying point in their opposition to the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional coalition that has governed the country since Merdeka 51 years ago.

Who are these RPK supporters?

Do they truly represent the Malaysian social milieu? Well, they themselves certainly feel that way. A browse through RPK's Malaysia Today portal would give that impression. The lively postings allude to a sense of inevitability in the socio-political evolution of this country, where some sort of People's Power movement, indeed an alternative irresistible political force, would sweep through Putrajaya to obliterate and replace the current ruling oligarchs with an "enlightened" administration driven by the mantra ofKetuanan Rakyat.

Is this really an accurate sketch in the complex Malaysian socio-political canvas? Do these people -- the posters, lurkers, trolls and bots inhabiting the Malaysia Today cyber-habitat -- really represent the conscience and aspirations and, indeed, the essence of the Malaysian people, a compelling sampling of the changing socio-dynamics permeating our nation?

Not really.

Who are these people then?

Malaysia Today is a typical SoPo portal, an aggregator of third party newsfeeds and blog postings, spiced with some original articles by RPK himself prior to his ISA detention. The Malaysia Today Webmaster (RPK in the past, and now his close associates since his detention) would "moderate" incoming readers' comments to ensure congruence to the portal's political sentiment. RPK himself said that daily he had to delete 500-600 comments sent by Malays, which he termed the "UMNO Cyber Troopers." This effectively skewed Malaysia Today into a supra cyber platform for non-Malays to spew their bigotry and chauvinism while sheltered from Malay reactions.

Typical of other SoPo blogs and portals, the site is frequented by the usual suspects, namely political gossip junkies in need of their daily "fix" of sensational revelations and maladies of the ongoing Malaysian political telenovela. The human tendency to revel in a schadenfreude orgy was satiated by RPK's rich pipeline of sensational "scoops" as well as his series of "True Stories" of our historical past, including a revisionist portrayal of the May 13 Incident, a version much more palatable to his predominantly non-Malay audience.

Visitors to his portal may not necessarily share RPK's ideology or the anti-Malay, anti BN/UMNO flavour of the content. Many just want to read alternative viewpoints to supplement the less-than-credible spin spewed by the mainstream media. Some visitors may, indeed, be RPK's many enemies, wanting to check out his latest antics. Yet others are just curious.

Out of this pool, a smallish group ultimately immersed themselves into the Malaysia Today cyber-habitat, became hyperactive posters, and evolved into "MT junkies," glued to the site for hours on end, alienating themselves from the realities of Main Street Malaysia and oblivious to the constantly shifting socio-political undercurrents that define Malaysian politics. These MT junkies -- overwhelmingly non-Malay -- actually believed their own postings, facilitated by the total lack of competing Malay viewpoints as these were "moderated away" by Malaysia Today's Webmasters. The MT junkies reinforce this make-believe empowerment by incessantly regurgitating the same points of view, essentially preaching-to-the-converted, in their comments to every new Malaysia Today story.

The propensity of Malaysia Today to block comments from Malays (RPK's "UMNO Cyber Troopers") that would countervail the bigoted viewpoints of the Chinese chauvinists and Hindraf sympathizers contributed to this false sense of empowerment among the non-Malays. .

The unbridled spiral of prejudice and contempt -- in a make-believe cocoon devoid of the voice of the Malay majority -- fueled an irrational exuberance among the MT junkies over a perceived "inevitable" change in the Malaysian political landscape, where the non-Malays (in the guise of DAP'sMalaysian Malaysia stance shrouded by the Ketuanan Rakyat mantra of the Pakatan Rakyat coalition) would have the major grip on political power in this country while the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional coalition would collapse and dissipate into thin air.

******************************

This RPK chap, a likable personality with a free-spirited, bohemian streak, was gradually emboldened by the ceaseless cheerleadings and promptings of the MT junkies. Ever more sensational stories were churned but these could not satiate the hungry hordes. RPK then did the ultimate – he himself became the story, starring in his own improbablesinetron radiating from the keyboard of his PC.

With RPK in the starring role, who needs third party revelations? He is the story! He can craft his own play and act in his own drama. He has reached the nirvana of SoPo blogging. Quite predictably, hits on Malaysia Today hit the roof, giving chedet.com a run for its money. RPK was now on par with Dr. Mahathir Mohamad! Nobody gets larger thanthat in Malaysia. Pak Lah, Najib Razak and even Anwar Ibrahim were reduced to supporting cast and bit players in the eyes of the MT junkies. A sense of invulnerability descended upon the Malaysia Today cyber-habitat and the mystique of RPK’s infallibility permeated his congregation.

But again, who are this flock of adherents that contributed to the deification of RPK in the cyber universe?

Here’s a quick and dirty classification:-

Groupie Gang I: The Idealists

These are the believers of a new, utopian Malaysia devoid of racial, religious and class conflict; a land of plenty for all; a just, corrupt-free nation of civil, law abiding citizens united in a celebration of cosmopolitan multiculturalism. The thought leaders of this small but influential group include fellow bloggers Dr. Azly Rahman, Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, Dr. Bakri Musa, Harris Ibrahim, as well as writers Karim Raslan, Wan Hamidi Hamid and politicians, Zaid Ibrahim and Tunku Aziz Ibrahim. The Idealists, albeit for different reasons and motivations, advocate either the abolishment or a revamp of the NEP, demonise Ketuanan Melayu, and view BN/UMNO as an obsolete post-Colonial relic quivering through the final vestiges of its existence. The elegant intellectual discourse spewed by the Idealists, usually revolving around the need for social justice, meritocracy and more “progressive” Malay attitudes are well received by the predominantly non-Malay MT junkies as this would entail the dismantling of perceived Malay-centric policy legacies built over the years by BN/UMNO. The non-Malay MT junkies usually refer to this group in their comment postings as the “good Malays.” Articles and blog postings by these "good Malays" are prominently displayed in Malaysia Today and their Chinese and Indian-friendly comments are approved by the gatekeeper, giving the casual Malaysia Today reader the false impression of a softening Malay stance amidst the perceived newfound political clout of the non-Malays in this "new" post-318 Tsunami political landscape.

Groupie Gang II: The Anwaristas

This collection of visitors and posters view Malaysia Todayas a convenient platform to spew their venom against anything that had to do with BN/UMNO, more so the likes of Pak Lah, Najib Razak and Hamid Albar. The nucleus of the Anwaristas’ gene pool can be traced back to Anwar’s ABIM and Reformasi days. Many are ex-hardcore UMNO cadres purged from the party in the aftermath of Anwar Ibrahim’s battle royale with Dr. M. These are essentially closet UMNO people – in attitude and mindset – the “have nots” in the intra-Malay competition for patronage and privileges. Beyond a common enemy in a Pak Lah/Najib-led UMNO, they have no affinities to Groupie Gangs I, IV and V and do not partake in commenting except to glorify Anwar Ibrahim and to ridicule the key UMNO personalities.

Groupie Gang III: The PAS Malays

These are predominantly PAS members, with some PKR supporters among the lot. They view UMNO as their ideological foes and tolerate the other RPK Groupies (for now) in their bigger quest to win the Hearts and Minds of the Malay masses. This group makes up a small minority in the English-centric Malaysia Today Cyber Habitat and many have filtered away amidst the strident criticisms on Islam by the portal and the comments sent by the anti-Malay MT junkies.

Groupie Gang IV: The Rabid Anti-Malay Racists

These are the bread-and-butter of Malaysia Today and form the majority of the posters. Their posts and comments say it all. Everything in Malaysia is linked back to their hatred of the Malays. These are the ethnic-Chinese chauvinists, Hindraf sympathizers and assorted hangers-on who suffer from an overwhelming sense of alienation in this country. They equate every symbol and instrument of Malaysian statehood – from Bahasa Malaysia to theNegaraku to the Rukunegara to the Songkok to the Jalur Gemilang and, of course, the Keris – to the Malays and hence not worthy of their respect and deference. This attitude spawned a deep-seated hollowness permeating their souls as they languish in a land whose essence run contrary to their aspirations. Hence, every post emanating from this Group would revolve around their revulsion of and paranoiac vengeance towards the Malays. Of course, when like-minded posts coalesced in the Malaysia Today cyber-habitat, an explosion of Malayphobia saturates the portal. And with the Malay voice effectively moderated-away by the Webmaster, this racist mania continues unchecked and unchallenged. The venom and ferocity of the attacks are matched only by the “spin” applied to various issues by authors and articles allied to their non-Malay agenda. Of course, to appease the Anwaristas and the PAS and PKR Malays, these Rabid Racists would replace “Malay” with the term UMNOputra or Mat Rempit or just plain beruks, but the message to the casual reader is clear: They hate Malays, and all the maladies of this country can be traced back to the Malays. Their own kind – the “repressed, smart hard working people” – are portrayed as a Superlative group, held in check only by the smothering political grasp of the Malays (oops, no … by the “UMNO people”) crawling in their subsidised tongkats and crutches.

Groupie Gang V: The RPK Cultists

To this group -- mostly young, impressionable non-Malays with their first intoxicating taste of politics – RPK is a demigod, a messiah sent by the Gods to rid Malaysia of the bad guys, to single-handedly rescue Malaysia from all the maladies caused by these people. Yes, all these and then some in one fell swoop of his …. errrr ….. keyboard! The cultists elevate RPK to a Supreme Being-like persona, a larger than life sage whose every word is the gospel truth, who’s every action is holy, and whose every pronouncement must be followed. Utterances of “my RPK,” “our RPK,” “I love RPK,” “RPK our hero,” “RPK wants” and “RPK says” began to percolate in readers’ postings and comments onMalaysia Today. I get blurry images of Jim Jones, Idi Amin and Kim Il Sung as I forage through the thick undergrowth of readers’ homage to RPK in Malaysia Today. And you know what? I think RPK actually gradually believed in this burgeoning personality cult and began to suffer lapses of self-grandiosity as manifested in his later posts and articles.

So what happened when RPK got banished to Kamunting? What happened to his hordes of supporters, the people who would join him arm-in-arm in a fight to the death with the ruling oligarchs? Where are the untold millions that would march to Kamunting to tear down the walls and hand-pluck RPK from the grasp of the baddies? Where? A hundred people in Anti-ISA and Free RPK t-shirts assembling at the entrance of the Kamunting camp or a couple of hundred people holding a candlelight vigil at Dataran Merdeka just don’t cut it.

Is this the real Malaysia? Is this group of affluent predominantly non-Malay urbanites a true sampling of the Malaysian population, representing the sentiment of therakyat? These people may be nothing more than a like-minded interest-group with deep-rooted animosity towards the Malays, egged on by partisan politicians naturally at loggerheads with their BN/UMNO rivals. What about the on-line petition drive to free RPK? How many actually signed up?

Does this list represent Malaysia’s demographic mix, a necessary condition to “transform the nation” from Perlis to Johor to Kelantan to Sabah into a different Ketuanan Rakyat paradigm? After discounting the meaningless prank names such as “Father of Najis,” “Death 666,” “Johnny Doe” (in the above sample), as well as the non-citizen residents and foreigners signing from afar, how many people actually signed up? How many legitimate citizens actually walked the talk and signed the petition? 10,000? 30,000? 100,000? These are peanuts compared to the purported millions of hits charted daily by Malaysia Today.

Assuming 100,000 Malaysians actually signed the petition, this would represent less than four-tenth of one percent or 0.0036 of Malaysia’s 27.5 million people, or one out of every 275 Malaysians. It means, 274 out of 275 Malaysians don’t really care. Is this four-tenth of one percent the Critical Mass sufficient to revolutionise the Malaysian political landscape, the people with the mandate to dismantle this country’s socio-economic-political equilibrium?

No.

These people are just a smallish cyber-community not at all representative of the Malaysian ethno-cultural milieu. But isn’t Malaysia Today the voice of the people?

What people?

Any blogger will admit that the number of "hits" do not translate into number of people. A Malaysia Today junkie might reload the portal 20-30 times a day just to access the stories. Also, not more than 30 hard core junkies post 90% of the comments. Go check the site. It’s obvious that a small group of hyperactive adherents account for a large amount of postings, hence, essentially preaching their political gospel to themselves in an affliction which may be termed “inbred blog postings syndrome.”

Again, where are the Malays? Where is Mainstream Malaysiana that would change the country? The writings on the banners allude to a predominantly ethnic-Chinese grouping. What does this say? Why are the Malay majority not taken in to RPK and the ideals of Malaysia Today?

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The vast majority of RPK’s supporters are just armchair quarterbacks and fair weather cheerleaders and people with nothing better to do who essentially outsourced and sub-con their political activism to this poor chap from the airconditioned comfort of their homes and offices, from their cosy beds and plush sofas, cybercafés and chic gourmet coffee joints. They are not even representative of the country, in terms of demographics, dispersion and political inclination. These junkies are more akin to the lunatic fringe than to the mainstream of Malaysian society. Who are these people? The content and nature of their postings revealed an English-literate motley crew of private college kids, bored pensioners, the unemployed, the under-employed white collar salarymen, the disenfranchised and a handful of professionals -- all with chips on their shoulders. There is also a good sprinkling of expats and foreigners posting from faraway places (146 countries according to RPK in the clip above). Plus a fair bit of ex-Malaysians with axes to grind and some kiasu Singaporeans.

Hardly forming the vanguard of the Malaysian Rakyat.

Yes, RPK (and poor Marina and kids) were conned by these people. These cyber-opportunists outsourced and sub-con their politicking to him while they cheer him from the comfort of their cosy homes and plush offices. Many seemed to ignore that RPK is a real human being, a late middle-aged man with a wife and many children. A man with responsibilities, hopes, fears, aspirations and vulnerabilities like the rest of us. These parasites and blood suckers ruined his life and unnecessarily estranged his family from mainstream Malaysia.

RPK himself is not really a grave threat to national security. His incoherent rantings and pathological animosity towards BN/UMNO and prominent UMNO personalities are old news. RPK is a known loud-mouth, a prickly irritant with a penchant for the dramatic. For many, his revelations and cyber activism are no more than pure entertainment, melodramatic political gossip on par with TV3’s obnoxiousMelodi and a much needed comic relief from the socio-political quagmire of the past 3-4 years under Pak Lah’s disastrous watch.

But RPK’s real fault lies in his propagation of Malaysia Today as a cyber platform for assorted bigoted and racist characters to spew their venom against the Malays and, in more than one instance, to ridicule Islam. His personal vendetta against the UMNO Cyber Troopers (purportedly led by Azalina Othman Said and Norza Zakaria according to RPK in the clip above) degenerated into an almost blanket deletion of pro-Malay comments, hence rendering the portal into a one-sided anti-Malay arena in the uniquely Malaysian game of race-tinged politics.

Indeed, MT Junkies (the Rabid Anti-Malay Racists and RPK Cultists mentioned above) are the bigger threats to national security. These racists, bigots and cyber-misfits hide behind their anonymity to flood Malaysia Today with venomous racist postings, instigating hatred for the Malay majority, ridiculing Islam, and spewing seditious spins to various national issues.

This was the real threat and his refusal to curtail this threat finally nailed RPK.

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My advise to RPK, Marina Lee and family: take a few steps back and view the bigger picture, the real landscape out there. What exactly is your struggle? Justice? For whom and where? The Penans, Dusuns, Senois and Semangs deep in our rainforests? Kedah paddy farmers? Trengganu fisherfolk? The ordinary civil servant or private sector clerk? The hardworking Pasar Malam vendors? The labourers in our plantations? The trishaw/beca man (yes, we still have them)? The hard core urban poor? Who? Where? Why aren’t they outraged by your ISA detention? We don’t see them take to the streets in Kota Bharu or Sarikei or Lahad Datu to demand your release. Most have never heard of you! Aung San Su Kyi you are not. Nor are you a Nelson Mandela or a Xanana Gusmão.

You are just a political tool for some selfish interests, for the elitists far removed from the grassroots and the ordinary man.

RPK doesn’t really speak for the real Malaysians out there, for the 27.5 million people from Langkawi to Besut to Batu Pahat to Kemaman to Santubong to Miri to Ranau to Semporna. RPK hardly exists in the consciousness of these masses. No, RPK speak only for the small lunatic fringe of our society -- the affluent, private art school on daddy’s-money set (bottom below) and the rabid anti-Malay Chinese chauvinist (with Marina, top below) and Hindraf Indian racists languishing in the deep murky crevasses of the cyber world. RPK and his ideals do not represent the sentiment of the vast majority of Malaysians.

RPK, Marina Lee and their kids were used by the nameless parasites lurking in cyberspace These anonymous characters embody the worst of human traits; they got something for nothing. Oh yes, they got their schadenfreudefix all right when the going was good. They have chewed the sweet fruits plucked by RPK, and spit out the pits to be picked up by Marina and her kids. The long lonely trips to Kamunting, the endless court dates, the deprivation of a husband and father, the despair and helplessness – will all be borne by Marina Lee and family.

Finally, where is Anwar Ibrahim? What is his stand on RPK’s detention? RPK gave his life, metaphorically speaking, to uphold Anwar’s “ideals.” RPK bet the ranch on Anwar becoming PM on 916 and came out a loser, a pathetic flat broke loser. Has Anwar and gang even addressed the RPK ISA issue? Indeed, his silence is deafening. What about Lim Kit Siang? Once Teresa Kok and the Sin Chew reporter got out, Unker Kit Siang has disappeared as well. What about PAS? Do you think either the old ulamas or the younger Islamist cadres have anything in common with RPK? Do you think they like RPK? Did RPK and his MT junkies pushed for the release of Nik Adli, Tuan Guru Nik Aziz’s son, who was under ISA detention for many years? I don't recall any Ah Sohs, Ah Mois, Leng Chais and Uncles bearing "Free Nik Adli" t-shirts in front of the Kamunting camp. Actually, you MT junkies would not recognize Nik Adli even if he walked right past your smug faces. And you expect PAS to sympathise with RPK? You expect PAS to fight for RPK amidst Malaysia Today’s anti-Islamic postings and its readers’ rabid rantings against Islam?

In a nutshell, do you think the Pakatan Rakyat gives a hoot about RPK? No. He was a useful tool. But he was also a disposable tool. RPK is no use to them now. Indeed, he is now a distraction . They want to govern the nation. They have no time for this old chap. To them, RPK is just a lost soul who threw too many dices in his own little crapshoot. Their focus is on 27.5 million men and women. Not one guy who spoke and wrote too much. And they won’t glorify, deify or make a martyr out of RPK either. That’s already reserved for one man.

Marina, you owe it to RPK to close down Malaysia Today. Your “struggle” is for nothing. These sly political opportunists and selfish cyber-parasites don't deserve your sacrifice. There are hardly a few thousand legitimate signatures in your Free RPK petition. Only a few hundred turned up in candlelight vigils and at the Hari Raya assembly at the gate of Kamunting. What does that tell you? There is no avalanche of support for RPK. There never was. The “millions of supporters” are just but a mirage spawned by delusions of grandiosity that snowballed in the Malaysia Today cyber-habitat over the years.

Let this be a lesson to other bloggers. Do not get caught in your own demagoguery, in a propensity to over-fantasize your relevance to the political process and role as some sort of a “peoples’ hero” based on the digits of your blog’s Hit Counter and a bucketful of readers’ comments.

30 Years Down Memory Lane

Almost exactly 30 years ago to the month, the King Edward VII School Taiping rugby team beat the Royal Military College to become Malaysian champion. This officially marked the revival of rugby in KEVII after almost two decades in the doldrums.

The last great KEVII side before that was the all conquering touring team led by my late father, Cheah Keat Hin who was a teacher in KEVII, in the early sixties (picture, left). That was before the advent of national schools championships.

Since 1978, KEVII has been the only "non-select" school able to take on its more equipped counterparts for national schools rugby honors. It has won many more national championships and has in the last three decades supplied scores of players to the senior state and national teams. The name King Edward VII School, Taiping is synonymous with rugby.

Next Friday, 10th October, more than a hundred ex-players, retired teachers and a handful of diehard supporters will re-live memories at a dinner in Taiping to honor the 1978 coach, Mr Yiew Siew Seng and the current coach, Tiger Ahmad Din. Ahmad Din who played under Mr Yiew in the mid-eighties has been the school coach for more than 10 years. He has emulated the achievements of his former mentor. Their contributions to KEVII Rugby have been invaluable.

The organizers have reproduced a rugby jersey in the design worn 30 years ago for everyone at the dinner. In those days, THE brand for rugby jerseys was the now defunct Bukta Conqueror. The following are some photos that tell the story (click on photo to enlarge):

Teresa Kok...Hang In There

Her recent unjustified detention under the ISA, the relentless character assasinations and celebration of her release with the Molotov Cocktails have continued to put her in the limelight. As I said earlier, while I had only heard of her now I know more about Teresa Kok; her popularity speaks for itself.

My own theory about the reason for the continued attack on her good name is that she is currently the "poster girl" of the Selangor PR government and the DAP; if the perpetrators can "bring her down" then the others would be easy...sort of like David bringing down Goliath but with reversed protagonist role.

Teresa Kok - Dressing appropriately. Seen here with DYMM Sultan Selangor on Hari Raya. Couple on the right of Tuanku is YB Teng Chang Khim, DUN Selangor speaker and wife.







This commentary by Wan Hamidi Hamid in the Malaysian Insider sums it up:


Teresa Kok and the supremacist minority
Commentary by Wan Hamidi Hamid

OCT 2

Teresa Kok must be wondering why some Malays are adamant in portraying her as a Chinese chauvinist, villain of peace and enemy of Islam. With her impeccable record as the most hardworking wakil rakyat and the Member of Parliament with the highest majority votes in the country, she must be at a loss to fathom the attempts to assassinate her character.

From the blatant lies that she had opposed the azan (the Islamic call to prayer), to her wearing a skirt inside a mosque, the Seputeh MP has to live through the nightmare of racial politics almost on a daily basis.

Despite repeated denials of the azan issue for which she was detained under the draconian Internal Security Act for seven days Kok is still being chastised by some quarters linked to Umno, including the Malay daily Utusan Malaysia.

For the three-term MP, who is known among her close friends as a devout Catholic and a staunch believer in multiracialism, the detention without trial-ISA was not enough for her detractors. After her release, some extremist elements threw a Molotov cocktail into her parents' house.

To make matters worse, a whole lot of text messages were sent around justifying the violent act. The saddest part of the story is that some Malays actually believe that Kok is guilty of insulting Islam which she is not.

The problem is those who believe the lies probably read one particular newspaper that is prone to promote racial supremacy. There are other Malay-language newspapers with higher circulation than the one espousing racist tendencies, yet they are not keen on resorting to false news. They seem to know the danger of playing up baseless racial accusations.

So what gives? Despite the many possible answers, it is likely that Umno, particularly in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, which suffered one of its worst election defeats, is venting anger in the only way some of its leaders know racism.

Already many Barisan Nasional component parties are unhappy with recent racial episodes.


Now that the Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) has left BN and Gerakan is mulling a similar move, the situation is critical for Umno-led BN. The fact that Umno is more concerned with its leadership transition, thus ignoring its partners, is likely to be a push factor for component members in the federal ruling coalition.

The tussle for the top leadership in Umno is expected to bring out the nastiest and dirtiest of tactics, especially when the party divisional meetings ~ the real backbone of Umno ~ begin next week.

As reflected during the branch meetings of the last three months, Ketuanan Melayu, or Malay supremacy, was the keyword among the grassroots leaders and members. Although top leaders have defined it as the struggle for the betterment of the Malays, others took it literally to mean the superiority of the Malays over other Malaysians.

This is especially true in the case of Teresa Kok when attempts to demonise her, despite being based on slander, continue to spread among the racist political element of the usually moderate and fair-minded Malays.

To this racist minority, Umno hegemony is their game, never mind that the basis of BN is racial harmony. They couldn't care less about muhibbah so long as their supremacist definition of the Malay is accepted by all.

Their only problem is that they are in the minority. Even Kok acknowledges it. She knows many more Malays accept her, not only as an MP or a Selangor state executive councillor, but also as a fellow Malaysian.

But spending a stint under the ISA and suffering the trauma of her parents' home being fire-bombed is not an easy experience to live with. She is hoping that more Malaysians, especially the Malays, speak up against racism and those who perpetuate the dangerous trend.

Even in high places she has good Malay friends. Former de facto Law Minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim quit the government in protest against Kok's arrest under the ISA and has even written an open letter to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to abolish the cruel law.

Kok has always been a popular figure with the Malay grassroots in the Klang Valley.

Immediately after she was released from the ISA, she attended a number of breaking-of-fast ceremonies, including at the Cheras Baru mosque, the one which she was accused of going into wearing a skirt.

The truth of the matter is the event was organised outside the mosque and Kok was wearing a long skirt covering her knees, similar to skirts she wears in Parliament, the Selangor state assembly and her state government office. She did not even enter the mosque.

But racists with agendas do not let facts get in the way of a good distortion in their favour. It's never too late, however, for some of these people to reflect on the good month of Syawal to ask for forgiveness from those who have been wrongly accused.

Maaf zahir batin

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UPDATE; 4th October

Why Teresa Kok Is The Target


The attacks against Kok and the attempts to portray her as a Chinese chauvinist who is anti-Islam represent a crude attempt at undermining the credibility and viability of the opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, as a viable multiracial alternative to BN.

She has been vilified as a Chinese chauvinist and portrayed as anti-Muslim. She was detained one week under the Internal Security Act for allegedly stirring up religious sentiments. And last week, unknown assailants threw a Molotov cocktail into the compound of her family home in Kuala Lumpur.

But ask DAP Member of Parliament Teresa Kok why she has become the target of a smear campaign in recent months and she will probably be hard pressed for an answer.
And those who know her insist she is anything but a chauvinist or an enemy of Islam that her detractors claim she is.

When Kok was detained under the ISA, even Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, who quit the Cabinet as de facto Law Minister partly in protest against the use of the law, said of her: "I know Teresa personally and I cannot see her as anti-Islam."

While Zaid was the only Umno member who spoke out publicly, he was not the only one who viewed the recent ISA detentions of Kok and a female journalist, who was released after 18 hours, as unwarranted.

"Look, everyone who knows her (Kok) knows she is not a bigot or a chauvinist. This makes the government look bad," one MP from Umno said.

In fact, it was some of Kok's political opponents in Parliament — from the ruling Barisan Nasional — who met with government officials in private to plead for her release. Such is Kok's popularity that when she made her first public appearance at a press conference hours after her release on Sept 19, she received a standing ovation from reporters.

It is probable that Kok, who won her Seputeh parliamentary seat in Kuala Lumpur with a 36,492-vote majority — the biggest — in the March elections, could win with an even bigger margin if polls were held today.

To her supporters, she is a hero who has been wronged.

It was alleged that she had abused her position as an MP and a member of the Selangor state government to direct a mosque to reduce the volume of its public address system during prayer times because it was disturbing non-Muslims living nearby.

The allegation, made by former Selangor Menteri Besar Datuk Mohd Khir Toyo, and highlighted in the Umno-ownedUtusan Malaysia newspaper, was found to be untrue. Even the mosque committee came out to publicly deny the allegation. Still, she was detained by the police.

The attacks have not stopped despite her release. Utusan Malaysia has made her, in her own words, a "cover girl" since her release. After she complained about the allegedly low quality of food served during her detention, comparing it to dog food, she has been chastised repeatedly in the newspaper.

Kok, known for her multiracial stand, has been determined more than ever to flaunt it since her arrest.

Following her release, she has been attending breaking-of-fast functions almost nightly during the just-ended fasting month of Ramadan.

But even that has become the subject of attacks by Utusan Malaysia.

Last week, Kok was criticised in the newspaper for "wearing a skirt to a mosque". The article appeared to suggest that she was wearing something outrageous and that her attire caused serious discomfort among Muslims present at the function.

However, facts suggested otherwise. Kok wore a long-sleeved dress which came down almost to her ankles. She also did not enter the mosque, remaining instead in its compound.

One of Kok's Malay-Muslim supporters said: "I don't understand why she is being targetted. She is usually so sensitive to the religious obligations of Muslims it is almost ridiculous. She usually takes great pains to tell me what I can or cannot eat when we are out that I find it hard to believe she would be anti-Islam."

Ultimately, the smear campaign could be attributed to the fact that Kok and a number of leaders from the Chinese-dominated DAP have taken pains to reach out to Malay-Muslim voters.

As a member of a party who is part of three state governments — along with its Malay partners in the Parti Keadilan Rakyat and Pas — DAP leaders like Kok have been reaching out more than ever, and successfully, to Malay voters.

This is undoubtedly a political threat to the ruling coalition led by Umno.

The attacks against Kok and the attempts to portray her as a Chinese chauvinist who is anti-Islam represent a crude attempt at undermining the credibility and viability of the opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, as a viable multiracial alternative to BN.

But targetting Kok, known for her congeniality as much as anything else, may well backfire.

Getting Real In A Nutshell...

Two separate articles put in perspective the thickening political quagmire that has gripped the nation; the first is by Joe Fernandez in Malaysiakini and the other by Jacqueline Ann Surin and N Shashi Kala in the new online news portal The Nut Graph.

While we face the mudslide after the GE12 tsunami, the global economic storm is gaining hurricane proportions. Prayer will not help!

Please read (rather long though):


Malaysia enters realpolitik era in days

Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, an Islamic Studies graduate who wooed the Muslim vote bank piously and impressed them on his way to the top, has in the past said quite a number of extraordinary things in public, indeed on national television, with a straight face and done exactly the very opposite almost the very next day amidst nationwide sniggers and "I told you sos".

Recent examples, which still rankle in the public memory, include the adjustments in fuel oil prices thrice in a row and the calling of the March 8 general elections despite denials to the contrary even the day before Parliament was dissolved.

He got married to his separated sister-in-law within days of denying he had any plans to do so. The ‘shotgun’ wedding raised more than a few eyebrows.

His plunging credibility and popularity rating has forced him to quietly drop his Islam Hadhari (civilisational Islam) platform but not before five opposition-ruled states banned this version of Islam within weeks of March 8 in a public display of contempt for his politicisation of the Faith.

Former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, in perhaps the last interview before he left office, said that he had set everything in place for the next leadership level and that Malaysia was well on its way to being the utopia he had promised by 2020. Prophetic words indeed!

"Abdullah came in with so much public goodwill after Mahathir left and now he has squandered all of it," say political analysts who charted his steady rise to the top through the lean years and the good ones.

"He rested on his laurels after the spectacular electoral performance of 2004 and betrayed the trust of the voters after making all sorts of promises. None of them have been carried out so far because they were all hype written by advertising copywriters who should stick to promoting soft drinks. Even the promised judicial reforms, reforms to the police, ACA and Election Commission are non-starters because he has no guts to take on the vested interests."

The thinking in the streets is: Why should his pledge not to use the ISA against opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim be any different from a history of broken pledges? "He has no credibility in the matter and those who accept his pledges are clutching at straws," is the common refrain, certainly cynicism, among the great majority of the sweaty, unwashed masses.

This is by no means calling the prime minister a congenital, or even pathological, liar. However, the fact remains that fast moving events in the past have forced him, a slow mover and slow thinker at best, into policy flip flops despite the risks of exposing himself to the continued humiliation of public ridicule.

"If you must call anyone a liar, pin it on the Fourth Floor boys," said a merchant banker in the know. "These four guys don’t know what politics is all about and they, of all people, are advising the prime minister on everything, from his wardrobe and hair gel to economic policies. Najib’s appointment as finance minister will see their wings clipped somewhat."

Psychological war of nerves

Incarceration, whichever way, is expected to throw a spanner in the works for Anwar who has set his sights on seizing the reins of the federal government and shooing away Abdullah from the palatial official abode which he now occupies in Putrajaya and isolates himself from the people.

Speculation is rife that US Vice-President Dick Cheney, US State Secretary Condoleeza Rice and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, among others, have rung Anwar personally in the wake of Abdullah’s remarks on the possibility of using the ISA against him, assuring him that ‘nothing of that sort will be allowed to happen’.

Abdullah, cocooned in his own sense of self-importance in the unreal Mughal Empire splendour of Putrajaya, is not likely to be impressed by such pledges despite the harm that may befall the country’s image and credit rating if he invokes the ISA.

"He is tempting fate like Aurangzeb, the last Mughal Emperor, who was bundled into exile in Burma unceremoniously by the English East India Company, of all the humiliating usurpers," said a history don who has read politics at the university.

The ‘Abdullah must quit by Oct 9' movement is ostensibly driven by the theory that the Umno president will be humiliated if he makes a bid for the top party post in December "since he’s likely to get very few nominations". This is a line that Abdullah’s four-man team of advisors on all things temporal, looking increasingly vulnerable by the day, will not buy.

They are more likely to read Oct 9 as an attempt to stave off the collapse of the BN federal government by having Najib, or perhaps a dark horse, hastily sworn in as prime minister "to take the wind out of Anwar’s sails".

Anwar himself, according to most schools of thought, made too much of the Sept 16 phenomenon, beating the drums of war in a psychological war of nerves, and lost valuable time. "He should have gone for a surgical precision strike immediately after being sworn in as the opposition leader," said a political secretary in Kuching who favours ditching the BN but not jumping on the Anwar bandwagon.

"This guy, having been fed on a Bollywood diet, loves to dwell on the theatrics too much for the entertainment value. No wonder he had himself photographed Rajnikanth-style as ‘Anwar the Boss’ – actually Bachelor in Social Science – in posters for his daughter (Nurul’s) March 8 campaign in Lembah Pantai.’ (Rajnikanth is a popular hero in Tamil and Hindi movies who fights for social justice.).

Anwar’s credibility was questioned when he did not make public the purported list of 31 to 33 crossover MPs from the BN. Umno leaders went to town on Sept 16 with their spin that they had called Anwar’s bluff even as they toned down their usual public image of high- handed behaviour and arrogance.

Apparently, Anwar was on the verge of doing so when reports started filtering in that Umno sympathisers in the Special Branch were harassing BN MPs individually and shadowing their every movement. Rumours sweeping Sarawak recently had it that the MPs were moving about in groups to discourage ‘harassment’.

The four avenues forward

Now, the question that arises: does Anwar want to arrest the tendency towards mere theatrics, so far, and make a serious bid for the prime minister’s post? If yes, get on with it quickly without further delay and stop issuing time-wasting ultimatums which make great headlines and nothing more, say his admirers and foes alike, who want to see an end to the political uncertainty which has mesmerised the nation since March 8.

What ‘realpolitik’ options does Anwar have now with the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head? Realistically, there are four avenues forward:

Prevail upon His Majesty, the King, to give Anwar the prime minister’s job in his infinite wisdom. The king can do this - after ‘interviewing’ the defector MPs and reviewing their petition, affidavits, statutory declarations and other legal documentation - by either instructing Abdullah to step down, or in the face of his refusal, sack him for having lost the confidence of the majority in the Dewan Rakyat.

There’s always a first time. There are precedents for this in the Commonwealth of Nations;

the King can also summon Parliament into an emergency session where ‘there’s a clear-cut conflict of interest’ as in the present case where the prime minister himself is expected to summon Parliament into session when in fact he (the PM) is the ‘guilty party’ who will have to run the gauntlet in parliament;

The king can also dissolve Parliament – unless the prime minister himself is willing to advise the king accordingly - and call for fresh elections to end the political impasse. Obviously, any royal decree on this would be testing the limits of the constitutional provisions, parliamentary democracy and the constitutional monarchy; and

The King can refuse to dissolve parliament or call for fresh elections, either on his own, or if so advised by the prime minister, on the grounds that ‘we just had an very expensive general election and the public interest would not be served by calling for another one so soon, especially when the opposition alliance has pledged to return to the people within six months to a year of taking office to win a new mandate’.

Of all the options, the consensus is that Umno itself would favour fresh polls rather than hand over the government without another fight to the opposition and flee with its tail between its legs.

Fresh polls would be like, fighting with one’s hands and legs tied for Anwar, if the BN caretaker government has him incarcerated in the run-up to the polls. Nevertheless, beggars can’t be choosers.

Fresh polling would see the wife, party president Wan Azizah, back in the fray to lead the opposition challenge although she herself is disqualified from standing for another five years by virtue of the fact that she resigned her own seat within months of winning it.

Anwar, not having been convicted by the time of the polls, can contest his Permatang Pauh seat again from behind bars and take it from there.

JOE FERNANDEZ is an educationist and former newspaper editor and ex-civil servant who feels compelled to put pen to paper when something doesn’t quite jell with his weltanschauung (worldview).

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Najib’s premiership not guaranteed
By Jacqueline Ann Surin and N Shashi Kala jacquelinesurin@thenutgraph.com, shashikala@thenutgraph.com


AS the power struggle within Umno begins to intensify with month-long divisional meetings set to begin on 9 Oct 2008, all eyes are on party president Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his deputy Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Najib seems set to take over the Umno presidency now that Abdullah has been forced to back off from the earlier June 2010 handover of power. Some observers say Najib could follow in the footsteps of his father, second prime minister Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, sooner rather than later if Abdullah chooses not to defend his party post at the March 2009 party polls.

Traditionally, the Umno president has been appointed prime minister by the Yang diPertuan Agong because the party is the dominant party representing the Malays within the Barisan Nasional ruling coalition, and is deemed to have the support of the majority of Members of Parliament.

But tradition may not hold sway in the nation's current political situation. Even if Najib becomes Umno president, he is not guaranteed the premiership, says constitutional lawyer Tommy Thomas.

In an interview with The Nut Graph, Thomas explains that all bets are off the moment Abdullah resigns as prime minister. It's the Agong who holds the key to the future of the nation's leadership.

TNG: Let's look at the contest of power within Umno. If Abdullah is no longer president of the party, is his position as PM automatically untenable?

Tommy Thomas: Yes.

But that's by tradition, right?

The sequence of events would be, after resigning or being removed as president of Umno, they would have an acting president of Umno. Because the party cannot be leaderless...they will appoint somebody else, in this case the deputy president, Najib. This is at the party level.

Then Abdullah would have to visit the palace and inform the king that he has lost the confidence of his own party, and so tender his resignation and the resignation of his cabinet. And the king will accept that.

When that happens, there is a vacancy in the office of the prime minister. At that point of time, the king has a free hand, because Article 43(2)(a) [of the Federal Constitution] — the appointing process — comes into play. The king can decide whether he calls the new leader of the Barisan Nasional (BN), which will be Najib; or somebody else who, in the king's judgment, enjoys majority support in the Dewan Rakyat.

So it is not automatic that the new president of Umno will be prime minister?

No. The king has his discretion under Article 43(2)(a).

Even though by convention, this has been our history?

Yes, but that was because there was no alternative candidate [but now there could be]. The constitution is silent on what happens if the PM dies in office or resigns from office. Both those things have happened in Malaysia. We've had one PM die in office (Tun Abdul Razak) and three who resigned: Tunku [Abdul Rahman], Tun Hussein Onn and Tun Dr Mahathir [Mohamad].

In each case, the Agong was not powerless. He did not say, look, the constitution is silent. What do I do? Why did the founding fathers not contemplate this? And the answer is, they don't contemplate every contingency. You use common sense and the spirit of the constitution. So in each case, there was no panic. The king and his advisors would have said that 43(2)(a) applies because there is a vacancy in the office of PM.

Because in all these four examples, it was always an Alliance government — followed by the Barisan Nasional government — with a very strong majority [in the Dewan Rakyat]; [and] with no credible opposition leader, the king's task was very easy. It is not so now.

So this means Najib's position as PM is not guaranteed.

Exactly. He could become either the prime minister or the leader of the opposition.

What can Abdullah actually do if he wished to forestall the inevitable?

As outlined in Article 43(4), if Abdullah himself feels he has lost the majority support for whatever reason, including that he is losing support within Umno, he is entitled to visit the king [to do the following]. He can tell the king he wants to tender his resignation and that of his cabinet because he thinks he no longer enjoys the support of the majority of the lower house (the Dewan Rakyat), and ask for Parliament to be dissolved. And call [for] elections.

He is entitled to ask [which is one of his prerogatives as sitting prime minister]. But it is the king's prerogative whether to say yes or no. The king can take into account the interests of the nation, economic factors, political turbulence, the fact that elections were held recently, the costs involved, etc. But the discretion is the king's.

So the king can, at that juncture, accept the resignation of the PM and his cabinet, and then say, no, I am not dissolving parliament, and instead invite someone else to form the government.

That's right. Or he can agree to dissolve Parliament, and the Abdullah administration will continue as caretaker government [until fresh elections are held].

The other thing I would like to suggest is, in times of crisis, [perhaps] it is a good time for the formation of a national government. A government of all parties — a grand coalition.

We have the example of the Barisan Nasional (BN). After the events of 13 May, Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak formed the BN in 1974 (by inviting opposition parties like Gerakan, the People's Progressive Party and PAS to join the Alliance; only DAP and Parti Sosialis Rakyat Malaysia refused to join the coalition).

So Tun Razak managed to persuade them, that five years after the 1969 riots, the country still needed a bi-partisan government. Has Malaysia reached that crisis today, where the king can call all the leaders and say, "I want you all to form a national government"?

Then the question, of course, is who will be the prime minister? Will it be [opposition leader Datuk Seri] Anwar [Ibrahim] or Najib or [PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul] Hadi Awang or Abdullah or even [Umno veteran] Tengku Razaleigh [Hamzah]?

So that is also the king's prerogative?

Yes. Or the other parties can go to him. In Tun Razak's case, it was the politicians who went to the king.

But I don't foresee the political parties doing that.

That's right. But the king can take the initiative. And there's a precedent in England in 1930/31, when King George IV called Ramsay MacDonald — the leader of the Labour party and prime minister at a time when England was going through the Great Depression — and all the leaders of the other parties together and asked them to form a national government. He called them to the palace and kept them "locked" up for a day and put tremendous pressure on them until they formed the national government, headed by Ramsay MacDonald.

But MacDonald's own party, the Labour party, was totally against it and expelled him. So he was head of a Conservative/Liberal coalition and governed for four years during the economic depression. And the king's decision was not challenged in court. They all respected the king's decision.

And there's a second example: Sir Winston Churchill during the Second World War when Churchill became prime minister in May 1940, and led an all-party national government. So England has two examples in the 20th century, and we have our own.

So having a national government, what would the implications be?

Well, it will bring down all the political tension, it will bring down all the silly external politicking. The temperatures will cool down. The leaders will have to go into a room and shout at each other and not in public. They'll have to reach a consensus, a decision and then inform the country. The cabinet will made up of members of all the parties.

They will rule by consensus?

That's right.

Nobody is talking about this option. They are either talking about a two-party system or a third force.

That's because they are not students of history. It could be that to have Anwar lead a grand coalition, or to have Abdullah lead, would be unacceptable to "the other side".
So it would have to be a new face — a third choice. Of course it has to be a Malay — we all accept that — so they might point to Tengku Razaleigh, for example. Then he might say Anwar becomes minister of finance, and Abdullah foreign minister, or whatever. So Abdullah leaves as PM and Najib is appointed defence minister...the main portfolios are given to the senior leaders.

I think the country would welcome it. I think people are tired of all this politicking.



PART II: Choosing the prime minister
By Jacqueline Ann Surin and N Shashi Kala jacquelinesurin@thenutgraph.com, shashikala@thenutgraph.com

EVEN as opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim stumbled in his quest to unseat the government by 16 Sept 2008, the likelihood of a change in government lingers palpably. Questions now abound about how exactly Anwar can achieve forming the next government.

Some legal experts have said a vote of no-confidence in Parliament against the sitting prime minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is the Pakatan Rakyat leader's only recourse.

Lawyer Tommy Thomas tells The Nut Graph what methods are constitutionally available for a change of premier. The constitutional lawyer explains the legal principles involved, stressing that blocking a vote of no-confidence in Parliament against the prime minister — which has happened twice already — is unconstitutional, as are attempts to detain Anwar or any other member of parliament (MP) at this juncture.

TNG: What are the legal principles established by the three cases: Stephen Kalong Ningkan (1966); the Privy Council case (Nigerian case: Adegbenro vs Akintola in 1963); and 1994's Datuk Amir Kahar Mustapha vs Tun Mohd Said Keruak, which involved former chief minister of Sabah Datuk Joseph Pairin Kitingan resigning from his post?

Tommy Thomas: The legal principles established by the cases are this: In the Stephen Kalong Ningkang case, the court said, the only way to test confidence is by a lower house vote. That is the legal principle. So it is confined to one method only. In the Privy Council case from Nigeria and the Pairin Kitingan case, there was no lower house vote. Yet the courts said in both cases, the governor acted correctly. That's the principle to be drawn.

So the three reported cases we know of [involved] governors (the Sabah and Sarawak Yang diPertua's powers are similar to a governor's). Yet none of them is the decision of the head of state or a constitutional monarch. I personally know of no [such] cases.

So, in the Malaysian context now, there are no precedents to guide us?

Going by Article 43(4) [of the Federal Constitution], although in our 51st year of existence, Malaysia is entering into uncharted waters but it doesn't mean a Malaysian constitutional lawyer is bereft of examples. Malaysian constitutional law follows British constitutional law [in that the king or queen appoints the prime minister]. And not just the UK, but the major or mature Commonwealth countries — Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India — follow British constitutionalism.

My point is the Yang diPertuan Agong has very similar powers to Queen Elizabeth II. So, the precedent would be what the Queen of England, and the previous monarchs, have done in the past. Those are constitutional conventions, and they would guide you.

And applying that, to my knowledge, the monarch's decision in England to appoint so-and-so as the prime minister — Mr X as opposed to Mr Y — has never been challenged in the courts. These decisions are called non-justiciable — you cannot take this matter to court.

Is this by convention?

It's a principle of law. And that's because the monarch's power to appoint the prime minister is what is known as a royal prerogative. It's like the question of mercy, pardon and giving honours — all these are examples of royal prerogative. So if, for example, you didn't get a Tan Sri-ship, you cannot go to the courts and say, "Judge, give me a Tan Sri-ship." Or if you have a Tan Sri-ship, you cannot go to court and say, "I want a Tun-ship." Some disputes are just not suitable for legal solutions.

But in this particular case, even though it is the monarch's prerogative, he or she is guided by certain conventions.

Yes, conventions or precedents. [But] when they exercise their conventions, if they exercise it "wrongly", it has never been taken to court.

Has it been in the past?

Never. Let me give you two real examples. In 1956, when Anthony Eden resigned as prime minister in Britain, Queen Elizabeth II had a choice of either Harold MacMillan or Rab Butler, both from the Conservative Party. She chose MacMillan. So those who supported Butler would say that's the wrong decision. But did they take it to court? No. They accepted it because that's the royal prerogative.

Likewise in 1963, when MacMillan himself resigned, again she had a choice of Butler and a few other candidates. She chose somebody from the House of Lords — Lord Sir Alec Douglas-Home. These cases happened fairly recently, not a few hundred years ago.

Now I give you an Australian example. In Australia, the governor-general represents the Queen, who is still the constitutional monarch of the country. The governor-general has tremendous freedom; they have vice-regal powers. The Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr in 1975 sacked the Labour Prime Minister Gough Withlam and appointed the leader of the opposition party, Malcolm Fraser, as caretaker prime minister. The entire Labour party was very angry, but they didn't challenge this in court.

So the head of state's decision is respected?

The conventional theory is that the person making the decision — the head of state — is supposed to look after the affairs of the nation in times of crisis. This person is above partisan politics and is concerned for the nation. The ruler embodies the nation.

And if you are a popular ruler, like Queen Elizabeth II for example, when she makes such a decision, the country will rally around [her]. Even if they disagree with a particular choice, they'll say fine, we recognise and respect her decision.

And over here, the king, or the institution of the Agong, has become very popular over the past 51 years. It's accepted by the country. And the present king, who is from Terengganu, is also popular, as was seen during the struggle over the choice of [the state's] menteri besar earlier this year (2008). When the Agong arrived in Kuala Terengganu on 29 March, he was welcomed by 10,000 people holding yellow roses.

How do you know that whatever decision made by the King — if he is invited to make that decision and which in his judgment is made for the good of the country — will not be received by millions of Malaysians in the same way? Because millions of Malaysians will say that they are fed up with the politicians fighting among themselves. We have more faith in the institution of the monarchy.

Just to clarify, in our Federal Constitution, there are a few ways that the existing government can be changed. One is through the show of no confidence in Parliament, and the other is for the Agong to make a decision if he thinks the present leader no longer enjoys majority support in Parliament. Could you elaborate?

We are invited to interpret Article 43(4) which reads: "If the PM ceases to command the confidence of the majority of the members of the House of Representatives, then, unless at his request the Yang diPertuan Agong dissolves Parliament, the prime minister shall tender the resignation of the cabinet."

What we are trying to do is find out what is the intention of our founding fathers. That is what the task is all about. How do you interpret those words?
Who are the founding fathers? First, the five members of the Reid Commission — two members from the UK, one from Australia, one from India and one from Pakistan — the senior Commonwealth members. The other group of people are Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun VT Sambanthan and Tun Tan Cheng Lock.

What we are trying to do is interpret their words, 43(4), with the intention they had in mind. Some legal experts have said it is limited to a poll, a vote of no confidence in the Dewan Rakyat. My argument is that cannot be the intention because if it is so limited, then the language would have been something like this: "If the Prime Minister is defeated on a motion of confidence in the House of Representatives, then..." So you see the opening words of 43(4) and my imaginary version are very different...the actual wording is far more general, broad and wide, whereas the other is specific and limited to one method.

Plus, there's a fundamental reason [for this]. When countries have written constitutions, the idea is that the written constitutions are meant to last for hundreds of years. It is a serious document. It charts the country's future. It is what is called a living tree. It has to cater to all kinds of contingencies and crises and emergencies throughout the life of a country.

So, the founding fathers used broad words, so that the governments, leaders and people that follow in the future would have some idea of what they intended and would interpret it. We mustn't forget the purpose of the constitution.

These — the vote of no confidence and the king's prerogative — are the two known methods.

But the important thing is that it is the king's satisfaction that matters. The king must be satisfied that the prime minister of the day no longer enjoys the confidence of the majority of the lower house. So what that means actually is that the king cannot act arbitrarily; there must be some objective facts, some proof, some reason for him to act.

And finally it goes back to the question of numbers. We know that the lower house has 222 MPs. To have a simple majority, whoever wants to be prime minister must have the support of 112 people. The king must be satisfied that whoever he is going to invite to form the government enjoys the support of at least 112 members.

How he goes about satisfying himself on this point is up to the king.

Article 43(4) doesn't make any mention of the methods he could use. Are there any precedents in the UK?

In the UK the Queen talks to people, they have their own soundings. But as to other methods that could be used, one is the declaration in writing, a document containing all 112 signatures. The disadvantage is the possibility of forgeries. How can the Agong be sure that the MPs actually signed the document? So in this case, the Agong may decide that he needs more proof. He may summon them to the palace.

But there could be other methods. It depends on the contingency.

So the methods that the Agong chooses to verify — whether the PM or an alternative candidate has the support or not — is up to him?

Yes.

But at this juncture, it does not seem like the Agong is being called to take on this responsibility.

We don't know. What I would say is that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim is treading very, very carefully because of the political reality, more than he needs to under the constitution. Because it is a fact, we know, it is public knowledge that the Speaker of the House has turned it (motion to table a vote of no confidence against the PM) down twice. Now, there I say the Speaker is acting unconstitutionally.

What remedy is there?

The remedy is for the Agong to say that he is aware that two motions for a vote of no confidence against the PM were presented to Parliament, and the Speaker rejected them. He can therefore conclude that the Speaker has prevented a voting of no confidence on the floor of parliament. And by such conduct, the Speaker has nullified, thwarted, and foiled the constitutional mechanism. Because 43(4) is there. You cannot thwart a constitutional mechanism. And that's what he did. He is acting unconstitutionally.

But no other action can be taken against the Speaker.

No, because you cannot remove the Speaker — the king cannot remove the Speaker. Nobody can. But what the king can say is, "I am therefore satisfied that that method should not be used in this case. I will turn to other methods."

So the Barisan Nasional are actually doing themselves a disservice.

Yes.

Because eventually people are going to be frustrated enough, and take notice enough to look at other methods.

Exactly. Constitutional law expert Prof Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi, for example, recommended that Parliament be postponed for six months.

Which is the Prime Minister's prerogative...

My answer is, that will be unconstitutional in the present circumstances. If you postpone the sitting of Parliament for six months with the objective of preventing a motion of no confidence, that would be unconstitutional. Just like if you detain Anwar Ibrahim today, that would be unconstitutional.

What if he is detained in any case?

In the present climate, it would be an unconstitutional detention. Because the Agong can say that as far as he is concerned, Anwar is a prime ministerial candidate. He may be in the pool of people the Agong may invite to form a new government.

To put it into context, the Agong doesn't have a free hand. He cannot appoint a senator to be prime minister. It must be a member of the lower house. So that means straightaway the choice is limited to 222 MPs.

What I am trying to say is, the Agong is not a dictator. His hands are tied to picking someone from the 222.

Technically, even if Anwar was under Internal Security Act (ISA) detention, that should not preclude the Agong from saying, "I believe that he has the support", and still appoint him as prime minister.

Yes. Absolutely. You cannot frustrate the system this way. You cannot detain any of the 222 MPs today because each of them is a voter. Because everybody knows — and the king certainly knows — we are entering into a critical period in the nation's history: uncharted, unprecedented. That is, there is a possibility of a change in leadership, both within Umno — between Abdullah Badawi and Najib and anybody else — and between the Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat. And the king knows in those circumstances, he may be invited to exercise the royal prerogative and appoint a prime minister.

You say he needs to be invited. Who needs to do this inviting?

Whoever goes to see him with the numbers. And therefore, the critical players are the 222 MPs because they chart the future. And the Agong can say, I need them all there. You cannot take 10 away or five away from either party.

So within the current circumstances, any kind of detention of MPs under the ISA is unconstitutional.

Yes, in my opinion. The big point to make is, you cannot arrange your affairs — be it the speaker or the prime minister or the home minister — in such a way as to thwart the constitutional mechanism, which has, at the minimum, 222 players (the MPs) and the king. [Among the MPs] is the potential prime minister. [So, the MPs] have special status at this current point of time.

Technically, the prime minister still has the prerogative of delaying parliamentary sitting for up to six months. And he can still go ahead and do that, even though you said earlier that it would be considered unconstitutional.

Well, the Agong cannot stop him. But [the Agong] will know that Method #1 has been frustrated.

Then at that juncture, it is left to the opposition to employ other methods to convince the king?

Yes. And that [same response by the opposition could be used if] the Speaker turns down [yet again] the motion to table a vote of no-confidence.

I Agree...Stop Baseless Accusations!!!

Bloggers "Another Brick In The Wall" and "Big Dog" had the following to say. I must say I agree with most of what they wrote. This flinging of unsubstantiated shit must stop. Opinions and comments are one thing but when it comes to direct accusations of impropriety, it becomes libel and slander.

RPK always maintained that he had proof to back all his claims and that he will produce evidence in open court. That is the reason why I am personally against detention without trial vis-à-vis the ISA. Therefore, blogger Kickdefella should just put up or shut up! Substantiate or shut up.

What is his agenda? Baiting the police to arrest him again? Inviting a blanket swoop? Martyredom perhaps?

Stop giving bloggers a bad name!

Read:

Another Brick In The Wall:

One RPK is Enough, Not Another One

Sheih Kickdefella two postings that pun the movie title, "We Know What You Did Last Christmas (Summer actually)" is quiet a revelation. But, it raised quite a concern.

One posting is on Abdullah and Nuri replacment which allegedly had son Kamaluddin as "agent" from Eurocopter that was given the contracts.

The other is a close resemblance to Raja Petra Kamaruddin (RPK) style of unfolding a story.

He claimed Najib sent letters to Ambassadors of few Europeans countries for Altantunya's safe entry. Malaysian diplomats witnessed Altantunya as part of the Malaysian entourage.

Another sensational revelation is Rosmah paid RM5 million for Bala to return to India.

Shieh claimed his information came from police during his stay in. Whether that is true or false, he may have to reveal his source.

Will he get them to help? Mind you, two police officers, RPK claimed was at the scene of the Altantunya blow-up with Rosmah, is now sueing RPK.

Background

Few years before the 12th General Election and the early years of Socio-Political Blogging, there exist a silent comradeship between bloggers, be it a somewhat formal grouping like All Blog or a loose understanding called Band of Bloggers or a group of friendly bloggers without a name.

There was an unstated understanding that transcend beyond partisan, ideological and activism affiliation to talk in unison concerning a certian issue. Malaysia Today (MT) then helped to promote these disparage views into a public discussion. That made blogs a powerful tool to push issues censored by the mainstream media into public knowledge.

Prior to the GE12, blogs and MT took a stand on issues and culminated into one of the biggest public demonstration, the BERSIH cum Yellow Wave demonstration. Subsequently, there was the Hindraf rally but the support was not as wide since its agenda was ethnic.

After the General Election, MT took a different direction in line with its new page makeup. The opposition oriented blogs generally changed along and took up the Pakatan Rakyat/PKR and Hindraf agenda. No more are issues on MT discussed with a wide ranging perspective, but with a clear propaganda agenda.

The agenda, that used to be about getting Abdullah, Khairy and the Tingkat 4, suddenly turned apologetic towards them. In place, it became Najib bashing and propelling Anwar to takeover Government through frogging MPs.

From Writer To News

With that as a background, RPK changed from a man churning news, stories and articles to one becoming part of the event.

Writers, poets, playwrights, and novelist play a role in igniting change in society and in the battle of ideas. But that batton has to be passed on to others to continue. It seemed now bloggers are no more churning personal opinion on events but are becoming part of the event.

When Raja Petra Kamaruddin was faced with a string of arrests, charges and lawsuits over various allegations he made in his "third party" statutory declaration (SD) allegation against Najib via Rosmah, it puts many bloggers, including yours truly in a spot between Freedom of Speech and Information and respecting the Law and Institution of Government.

The SD made was suspect and difficult to fathom. In the light of the ongoing Altantunya murder trial, it was contemptuous of the courts. RPK grew bolder, maybe out of his own conviction, releasing many other statutory declarations like that of the missing Balasundram. It remaisn as stamped heresay and subjected to police investigation.

Many bloggers felt RPK was inviting trouble for himself from his allegedly "seditious" (as per the Sedition Act) writings. True enough, RPK is now not only faced with those legal issues but the extra legal ISA for practically indefinite period.

Is it worthy being detained for an allegation that has yet to be determined as true? Shouldn't bloggers have some level of responsibility, integrity or the least, maintain a safe level of rationale and conviction in their writings?

More so, for those with a name to the blog and command a good following.

----------------------------

Brother Sheih, Please la ... Make a police report and reveal your proofs there. And, respectfully follow the court process accordingly. If tehre is a case, go slug it out in court. No RPK-esque stunt.

If you wish to write, substantiate any serious allegations made. More so, for capital offense like murder where the burden of proof is heavy. Reveal real documents and not just statutory declared heresay. Otherwise, you can go down for making baseless allegation and fabrication.

Writers have to stay around to keep the fire burning. We have to live to fight another day. Remember that you haven't Kickdefella. One shouldn't assume it is an easy and given path ahead.

The last thing you should do is to discredit Najib based on unfounded claims. Sincerely I hope you have no intention to spoling Najib's plan for next week's D Day and allow Abdullah safe passage. Not only Abdullah wants to stay around, even Anwar wants him around.

Getting RPK out is tough. One RPK is enough. Not another one.


Big Dog:

What agenda is Kickdefella up to this round?

Another blogger joined the baseless accusation train. Bad enough that Raja Petra Kamaruddin, then Malaysia Today editor (now ISA detainee in Kamunting Camp), rabidly lambasted unbelievable stories about DPM Dato’ Seri Mohd. Najib Tun Razak being directly involved in the murder and cover up of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaaribuu. Now we have blogger Kickdefella, with another propesterous story on how private investigator Balasubramaniam.

Has the famous poster-maker turned political blogger any shred of evidence on these serious accusations? This is nowhere near being in the band of “skepticism”.

The timing is also a factor. At the finest moment where DPM Najib is said to be nominated as the most popular and likely candidate (within the purview of UMNO members and delegates) for UMNO Presidency, stories like this is being published and meant to attract adverse reactions.

The title is also damning, especially on the day most sacred and important for majority Muslim Malays. UMNO Divisions are supposed to start the annual general meetings beginning 9 October 2008 and nominations for the Presidency will be closely watched, not amongst UMNO members, but the whole world at large.

UMNO President PM ‘Flip-Flop’ Dato’ Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is at the verge of getting kicked out from UMNO. Even there are skepticism about him wanting still to be nominated, despite the strong views MT UMNO thrown against him three weeks ago, it is still pertinent that the pressure to show him the door. Of course, it is not without within the UMNO vine, to nominate the most likely candidate which is the Deputy President DPM Najib.

What does Sheih Kickdefella expect from this posting? Get arrested another round, for ‘investigations’? He was picked up recently for posting the Malaysian flag upside down, which is deemed seditious.

Bloggers should be responsible with their scoops. We hope he really have incriminating evidence on this new accusations thrown to make the situation much more complex than it already has, especially from the eyes of bloggosphere users. Otherwise, posting like this will just cause confussion and demean the real role of bloggers: as provider of alternative media.

Raja Petra Kamarudin – Our Very Own Prisoner of Conscience

RPK has been incarcerated since 12th September and how he continues to blog from his current domicile is as amazing as the man himself. This latest posting, Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death appeared yesterday in MT.

He is supposedly in solitary confinement but his sense of humor is obviously intact as he seems alluding to a mangy pussy smuggling his blogging notes to a waiting accomplice. How else is he blogging la!?!

Humor aside, he must be hurting and especially today being Hari Raya, he must be pining for loved ones who I am certain are suffering an even greater agony; few torments are worse than a combination of longing and uncertainty.

There are those who may still ask who is this man Raja Petra Kamarudin. Yet many already know him so well, probably not as RPK the man but for his deeds. No one under detention (not even Anwar) has ever sparked so much public outcry, with such fervor and amongst so diverse a cross-section of society.

RPK is being imprisoned and persecuted for the non-violent expression of his conscientiously-held beliefs. In this day and age we have RPK as Malaysia’s very own prisoner of conscience! How wonderful!

RPK is a man whose pen the authorities say is more dangerous than a keris and his writings cause racial discord. Yet, I see Malaysians of all races together at candle light vigils for his freedom.

RPK is a man with the gumption and bollards to say more than many of us dared to think about the injustices in our country yet they have charged this true patriot with sedition.

RPK is the man they say insulted Islam yet I have gained more sense from his writings on Islam than from material expounding the brand promoted by the Preacher Man who “leads” my country.

He is the man they ISAed because of “intention to incite public chaos” yet the People only came out in the thousands because they arrested him.

He has taunted and tainted the powerful and the influential without fear or favor yet he hides in plain sight, ever challenging to be put to strict proof in a court of law.

And what is his crime? He just refuses to lie down!!!

I do not claim to know RPK (nor Marina) well but I have met them on more than a couple of occasions. I certainly have not interacted with him socially and cannot lay claim to know RPK the man, like Bernard aka Zorro, Haris (Ibrahim) or Imtiaz would. Yet, I think I know him; I know him as a fellow human being.

I know him through watching his enduring love affair with his wife in his writings and through my own conversation with Marina at Blog House one day. If there is such things as soul mates then they are.

I have read his open letter to his son and I have read about his trials and tribulations in business.

I have read his account of own insecurities and the significance of the number 27 in his life. He is in his third 27 years and says;

“… my first 27 years of phase one was the jahil period, and the second 27 years of what I call phase two, the Iranian Islamic Revolution period, my ‘enlightenment’ period. Phase three; however, appears to be my questioning and doubting period, which is giving rise to my disillusionment period.”

Yang Mulia Raja Petra Kamarudin, you are no ordinary man yet you are as ordinary a human being as I am. With all your strengths, you are vulnerable to pain and anguish and for all the good you have done for so many; you certainly do not deserve the ISA! That your detention is factually and morally unjustified has been represented by so many to so many, yet you languish in solitary confinement in my (and Zorro’s) hometown, Taiping.

On the other side I see a man who clearly knows how “sunyi” it can feel when he lost his wife of more than 3 decades. On the other side, I see a man who also loves his family just as much, if not more. On the other side I see a man who claims religious piety yet is so easily seduced by the great temptation called self-justification. On the other side I see a man under siege but still having the power to do the right thing; release RPK. On the other side I see a man who is just as ordinary a human being.

This is the season for forgiveness and well wishes yet it appears the man on the other side is still able to reconcile himself to himself in festive cheer, for his own sake. But Mr. Preacher Man, if you do not listen to your conscience, please listen at least to Zaid as he wrote to you in Malaysiakini. The end does not always justify the means and even with all your weaknesses; do not do unto others what you do not want done unto you.

Mr. Preacher Man, you need not promise to be a PM for all Malaysians because you just cannot. Listen to the majority of Malaysians and do the right thing.

Selamat Hari Raya RPK, Marina & Family