Checkmate or are there any other moves?

I like politics because it is a test of a man’s ability to understand a group of humans, convince that group of humans, manipulate that group of humans and make that group of humans agree with the man on whatever the man decides to do.

Now replace the word “man” with any political party’s name.

Does it make sense now? Surely it does.

To understand this further, you have to refer to the happenings in Perak State Government (a state in Malaysia). If you have been following politics, you will know that Perak was ruled by PR (opposition party) with a slim majority of 31 against 28 in a 59 seat assembly.

The BN (ruling party) played it’s game by asking their own member to jump to the opposition and then later jump back with 3 more PR members. This makes BN having 31 members against PR’s 28. The whole scenario has changed. The government was handed over to the BN in name that it commands majority seats in the assembly.

Embattled in this rather funny situation, the PR guys started a series of counter strikes. One of them is the suit filed by the PR Chief Minister. Among others, is the silent bomb by the speaker of the state assembly, that is a member of the PR.

This speaker, coolly suspended 7 members of the BN (the newly appointed Chief Minister and his 6 executive councilors) for a period of 12 to 18 months.

Apart from this the speaker also not going to allow 3 members whom jumped from the PR side to the BN side.

I think by now, you should have taken out your “super high tech” calculators. Start calculating.

PR has 28 members, BN, which had 31, will not have 7 for the next 12 months, and most probably will never see the 3 party hoppers in the state assembly again – that leaves only 21 to carry on with whatever they can carry on.

In my view, the assembly looks like a hung assembly with no parties holding the simple majority. I don’t know law very much but I think you cannot win “a confidence motion” or even “a no confidence motion”. What will happen?

Surface analysis – dissolve the assembly and call for a fresh snap election.

Or, a super genius from BN should come out with a sophisticated counter movement that will lift off the checkmate done by the PR.

Politics makes life livelier ….. Wait and see for the next move. Checkmate or are there any other moves?

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/18686-perak-speaker-suspends-entire-exco

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/18701-perak-speaker-has-suspension-powers-says-legal-expert

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/18694-perak-bn-says-suspension-is-against-rule-of-law

Subra

Whose decision is it really?

When you see the word decision, I am sure you will know that this article is about politics, a subject that I did not write in this blog for a long time.

All attentions (Malaysians) are on the state called Perak in Malaysia, simple translation; the SILVER STATE of Malaysia.

The ruling government “is” or “was” a coalition government called Pakatan Rakyat (PR) which is an opposition party in the Parliament. The majority held by them was very slim. Total seats were 59 and the PR coalition government had 31 against 28 (Barisan Nasional {BN}).

The BN guys just needed 2 guys from the PR to defect and give BN a simple majority to overturn the PR government and form their own government.

To everyone’s surprise, 1 legislative member from the BN side jumped from the BN camp to the PR camp. Everyone was wondering why, but rather than spending / wasting time thinking why this happened, the PR was so happy and celebrated. Now PR has 32 against 27, any sane mind would have considered this as a structural reinforcement for the PR government.

Suddenly 2 PR legislative members were missing, then there was 1 lady saying she is not defecting from the PR side. In this chaotic situation, the PR government made a decision to dissolve the existing government to pave way to a fresh election to get firm mandate from the people.

While all these were happening, the 2 missing members together with the lady member declared that they have quit their parties under the PR coalition and now stand a s an independent members.

You need to pass at least university maths to understand all this. Now the numbers stand at PR 29 against 27 BN and 3 Independent. Just when everyone thought they can put back the calculators, the guy who switched camp from BN to PR now have switched camp again. This time from PR to BN. Yes, please use your calculators again. The numbers have changed to PR 28, BN 28 and Independent 3.

Now who can form the new government? Is it PR or BN? All depends to whom the 3 independent members throw in their mysterious support.

People chose a candidate to represent them based on 2 major reasons. One is, which party they belong to because the party reflects their struggle and vision. The other is, who the person is, what type of a man is he. Based on these 2 major reasons, people decides their vote.

We can sum up the deciding factors into the 80/20 ratio, which in my opinion, 80% of your decision should be based on the political party the candidate belongs to and 20% for the candidate himself. Relenting on this ration, a candidate should never change his political party. If he decides to leave the party, he should resign from the position that he won using the party’s name.

Very rare you see candidates winning on their own caliber (it has happened in Malaysia where independent candidates have won). Only a few have achieved these kind of remarkable triumphs. But people should remember that their candidate could not achieve anything more after winning the election (correct me if I am wrong, my knowledge about successful independent candidates are limited).

Therefore, when the people cast their votes believing that they have voted for a guy of party A turns out to be jumping camp to party B. I like the candidate but I don’t like the party B. Now did I, as the citizen of this Malaysia, got a fair chance to vote my favourite candidate and favourite party member to rule the land I belong to?

It looks like, I just can vote but the outcome is all in somebody else hand. It makes every voter thing, whose decision is it really?

http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/97547

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/17590-bn-set-to-form-perak-govt-as-sultan-defers-decision-on-dissolution

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/opinion/baradan-kuppusamy/17609-a-hollow-victory-for-bn

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/opinion/malik-imtiaz-sarwar/17549-making-sense-of-the-perak-controversy

Subra

Judgment by judges, beyond politics

Writing openly about ISA (Internal Security Act) detention is something sensitive in Malaysia. It is even worse if you do so about an ISA detainee. It shall be nightmare if you talk about the Minister who signed the detention.

Therefore all are refrained from discussing this matter. If no one is talking, then the whole issue becomes one sided story. The authority talks, the rest listen. No questions can be asked because ISA is a prevention act.

On the 12^th of Sept, a journalist, an opposition MP and Malaysia Today editor were arrested under ISA. The whole country cried foul. But the decision was defended and upheld firmly. Anyhow, the journalist was freed within 24 hours and the opposition party MP was released a week later. Unfortunately the editor was kept much longer.

There were legal tussle between the editor’s legal team and the authority for some time. Surprisingly, on the 7^th of Nov., the editor was released by the court. Surprise is the most appropriate word because, in general, the courts are deemed as an extension of the government and the government shall decide based on political pro and con.

It is my personal believe that, all Malaysian courts’ verdict are weighed against the effect and impact to the ruling government.

Hopefully no judges are reading this. I think that I am not totally wrong when I say, all verdicts tend to lean towards ruling government. Or, at least, the verdict doesn’t create damage to the ruling party.

The verdict on the RPK (the editor – Raja Petra Kamaruddin) was something very surprising because it puts the Minster and the authority in hot soup. The detention order was found to be non compliance with the related act. Rakyat (people) now questions the ability of the Minister and the authority in making such decisions.

Even worse, the Minister and the authority now have to challenge the court’s decision in order to protect their mistakes. They may also find other ways to detain RPK again. Rather than finding the right act and method to detain RPK, I hope the Minister and the authority will spend more time and effort to investigate the facts on why RPK is considered as a threat and justify it.

RPK’s release is a milestone in Malaysia courts (I guess), it was indeed a great surprise and I remember reading that RPK himself was surprised. This incident proves that judgment by the judge was beyond politics.

Subra

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/11957-raja-petra-freed

Change and excitement - What we wanted and what we got!

We were all eagerly waiting for changes.

Changes that happened:
4 states changed hand.
Many seats in the parliament changed to opposition members.
The perspective of democracy changed.

Changes that did not happen:
Policies and tactics (which are base words for politics) used by ruling government did not change.
Mentality and thoughts of the ruling party did not change.
Information disseminated to the public is still based on "I talk you listen-don't ask, don't think".

Think back on what we (the rakyat) wanted.
We wanted real change in the arena of politics.
We wanted to see the political parties and the politicians change their view and their stand on the race based political system.
We wanted to see some initiatives triggered to realize these changes.
We wanted the opposition party to take over the government from the ruling party in order to give a wake up call to the ruling party.

We thought that the ruling government will understand possibility of the opposition party's intention to take over the government may happen.
We thought ruling party will think for the benefit of all the people in Malaysia and do something to correct the wrongs and re-align the path for betterment.

But what happened was:
Ruling party is just struggling to keep their job by taking care of the few who decide their immediate positions (positions in their party and the governmental positions that come together with the party's position) - "rakyat" is forgotten.

Opposition party made fantastic promises and indeed staged a good performance till they tumbled on their own deadlines.

I am not complaining on the opposition party's "missed" deadlines, but I feel that, the dates were committed by themselves and were not imposed by the rakyat.

If I ask you to dig a 1000 feet hole within 3 days without knowing your capabilities and your equipment, your failure to dig the hole can be shifted to me. But if you yourself committed that you can dig the hole within the specified time frame, your failure is 100% yours - knowing your own capability and your resources, your commitment should be realistic.

We wanted changes, but both parties (ruling and opposition) gave us some excitement, not the real change.

See it for yourself : What we wanted and what we got - Change and Excitement !

In everything you do (in work or life), bring in the change and not just the excitement.

916 - in the eyes of man and woman

Very interestingly Ms. Choo pointed out in her blog http://mommyscchoo.blogspot.com/2008/09/916-gold-or.html that 916 is seen as gold by women and 916 is seen as a political restructure by men.

Indeed, could 916 start the re-structuring of political fundamentals in Malaysia?

Maybe Malaysia is ready to take on the new era of understanding among the multi racial society.

All the while we have been thinking that Malaysians are still living in a strongly knit racial divisions and in general claim that we are multi racial. March 8, 2008 showed all of us that we are no believers of race based politics. We saw people from all races voting for people from all races based on their political principles. (Although I still say that people voted on the basis that they wanted to teach a lesson to the present ruling party, I tend to agree in general that we are about to leave the race base politics).

Today is 916, there is something big going on. What will be next is not a surprise. All Malaysians (almost all) know what are the possible options.

1. Snap Election
2. Mass arrest under ISA
3. Opposition party forms the new government.

Till now I am still unable to make a guess.

In a remote part pf my brain, I see that there could be a change in the leadership within the ruling party and this will make all those from the ruling party who wanted to defect to think twice before crossing over. If such thing happens then, all the 3 options will never take place.

No matter how 916 is seen in the eyes of man and woman, we sincerely hope it will churn out golden opportunity to all of us and to our country.

Subra

Should we speak....I mean can we speak?

The latest ISA arrest (3 people - 1 was released within 24hours) instills fear. Lawfully speaking, ISA is supposed to instill fear in "bad" people and create safe feeling in "good" people.

Without any doubt, the ISA has instilled fear and the safe feeling among the people. The only problem is, we do not know who are the bad people and who are the good people.

If there is a terrorist roaming around the country and pose a threat to the safety of the people and the security of the nation, then the arrest of this terrorist will create safe feeling among the people and instill fear among other terrorists.

What happened in Malaysia on the 13th September 2008, made me wonder who are feeling safe now and who are frightened now?

Freedom of speech and freedom of information are inter related. When someone wish to express himself, it is called as freedom of speech. When someone wants to know what was said, then there comes the freedom of information. The media acts as the conveyor. The claims of misinterpretations are baseless because, if it can be misinterpretated, then the information was not spoken clearly. Simple Murphy's Law - If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.......if something can be wrongly interpreted, then it will be wrongly interpreted.

Same like many others, I too think that we have freedom of speech and freedom of thoughts but.......the question is ............Should we speak....I mean can we speak? I don't even know whether we can ask?
Subra

Sin Chew reporter released
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/9/13/nation/2022372&sec=nation

Want to believe it or not, it is your choice !

Yesterday’s (15th July 08) debate between Anwar and Shabery on reducing the petrol price made me recall a word I heard long time ago, “SCOTOMA”. Meaning extracted from dictionaries sounds like this :-

“Scotoma”
A scotoma (Greek: darkness; plural: "scotomas" or "scotomata") is an area or island of loss or impairment of visual acuity surrounded by a field of normal or relatively well-preserved vision.Every normal mammalian eye has a scotoma in its field of vision, usually termed its blind spot. The presence of this normal scotoma does not intrude into consciousness because it is very small, but it can be demonstrated to oneself by the simplest of clinical methods (such as the one in the blind spot article).

Apart from this one word, the debate also helped me to recall a phrase,

“The mind sees what it wants to see”.

Who was the winner of this debate?

I think the question should be whom do you want to be the winner?
Anwar or Shabery?

Relating this to the phrase “The mind sees what it wants to see”, made me ask myself what I wanted from this debate.

The 41%hike in petrol price really took a damaging hit on my family’s daily life. The chain effect of the price hike throughout the supply chain made me dig into my pocket much more deeper. Therefore when I was watching the debate, my mind already tuned it’s radar to look for something good that will soothe my mind and hopefully in real life later.

Automatically, the debate itself has put me on the biased side where, one guy is saying that the price increase is unavoidable and another guy is saying that the price can be reduced. At this juncture I need not to justify my “wants”. It is clear that I am looking for price reduction. My mind started to look for good things that are coming from Anwar’s mouth. On the other hand, whatever Shabery is saying seems to be excuses. Again, remember the prejudice of the mind which has already set it’s mind to be biased. We are human and when the situation is related to our daily life we tend to look for what we want.

This term can be further understood if you look at the scenario of being a jury in a court hearing. If you are one of the victims or related to the victim, you indirectly have compromised your judgment. Therefore you will be looking for statements, points, arguments, evidences, circumstances to substantiate in finding the accused guilty. But if you are totally independent, whereas you are neither related nor linked to the victim or the accused, you will weigh the court proceedings neutrally.

This is the scenario of the people watching Anwar Shabery debate yesterday. I believe all of us were looking for something good. I am very sure that we were never open to the point where the price hike is justified. We were a group of biased people (I don’t mean to offend, that is the reality).

On the word “scotoma”, which I would like to term it in simple as “blind spot”, comes on both debaters. If you really watched closely, you will see some true colours of the debaters prevailing. The blind spot is not visible to us until someone tells us that these things were missing. Anwar termed effected people as “petani”, “nelayan”, ”bumiputera Melayu”, “bumiputera Sabah Sarawak”, “segelintir Cina miskin”, “kaum India di estate”. This point should be looked deeper. What is his actual perception or principal in “serving equally” to all the people. When he defined poverty based on their livelihood activities and race, what does it reflect? Need a lot of thinking on this matter.

As for Shabbery, how can he fail to see that the price hike is not effecting all the people. All the people means: people from the ruling party too. The way he avoided this fact makes me uncomfortable. Or could it be that the people from the ruling party is not effected by the price hike……I don’t know.

Since the mind wants some good feeling, I think the debate has given a little “feel good” to many. Why many feel good? Because if Anwar forms the government, the petrol price will be down by RM0.50 and can even go further down in the future. Want to believe it or not, it is your choice !

Subra

I surfed some website and saw some interesting comments on the Anwar Shabbery debate, browse through on your interest.

http://limadang.com/2008/07/15/dato-anwar-vs-dato-shabery-debate-on-how-to-decrease-fuel-price/
http://kadazanpower.blogspot.com/2008/07/anwar-wins-debate-on-oil.html
http://thedriller.blogspot.com/2008/07/fuel-debate-anwar-vs-shabery.html


“petani” – farmers
“nelayan” – fishermen
”bumiputera Melayu” – son of the soil status local Malays
“bumiputera Sabah Sarawak” – son of the soil of Sabah Sarawak
“segelintir Cina miskin” – A small group of poor Chinese
“kaum India di estate” – Indian ethnic in estates

Will small vibrations turn into earthquake?

What a start? As the week started to unfold, I saw many political maneuvers going on. Rather than saying it is interesting, I would say it is frightening.

1. The Perak state ADUN made a racial remark when she wanted to know whether the speaker agrees to disagree on the statement of beating a snake or a person from a certain race first. - BN the saviour of all races........!

2. It seems to be OK when MCA President Ong Ka Ting said he is not going contest for the Presidents post. Some of his down lines too announced that they will not contest for the posts available in the party. Making way for new blood or withdrawing from internal fights are deemed as mutual benefit for all.

3. When people were in the midst of evaluating whether these "not to contest" moves are good or not, there came a bomb saying that someone lodged a police report saying that Anwar Ibrahim "sodomised" him.

I have heard the great phrase, "History repeats itself", but in this situation there are 2 histories repeating itself.
a) "sodomy accusations" and
b) "political conspiracy accusation"

Regardless of which is true, at the end, it seems like we have a "lose lose" situation.

Let it be the sodomy charges are true, then that's the end of new era for Pakatan Rakyat.
Let it be the conspiracy charges are true, then where is the present government's true spirit of serving people with honesty.

The government may outrightly say that they have nothing to do with this matter, but unfortunately, people would not accept the government's statement. It is because the direct beneficiary of this accusation is the ruling government, not any individual.

4. Malaysia seems not safe anymore when you speak from your heart.

a) Waythamoorthy of Hindraf is in Britain
b) Anwar Ibrahim in Turkish Embassy in Malaysia

Buddha said that, when you are in trouble or unable to decide, go back to the beginning.
Nature's teaching also says the same.
But, most of the time people refuse to go back to the beginning. They are so stubborn, therefore, mother nature forces the people by creating disasters in many forms (fire, flood, wind, earthquake and so on). By these natural disasters, things are forced to go back at least few steps. Then people repent and starts to move on with more cautious mindset. All natural disasters start with minor movements or activities. Later it turns huge and creates unrecoverable damages.

Similarly, the political situation in Malaysia is having many small vibrations.

Will all these small vibrations sums up to a political earthquake?

Subra

What would you do?

OK this topic is definitely politics.

Why I choose to write about this? Last week I met Mr. DP Rajah, a leading lawyer in Butterworth. If I said that a lawyer is "good", nobody would believe, but if you see this person, you will beleive that there are few "good" lawyers around.

He said that DAP (Democratic Action Party - Opposition party) is somewhere around its "peak" or "optimum" level. It means that they have won a number which is the best they can win all time. They have used up all their generals and seems that there are no more new capable generals to run the battalion.

As for PKR (Parti Keadilan Rakyat - Opposition party), from having 1 seat in parliament earlier, now has 31 seats, you can clearly see that they have a lot of room for development. What is the optimum for PKR is actually unpredictable.

Let's leave PAS for a while (or for a long while).

All 3 formed PR (Pakatan Rakyat)and now controls 82 seats.

In the 12th Malaysia General Election, people did not vote (general opinion) the opposition because they love the opposition or hate the ruling party. People voted opposition party because they wanted to send a message to the ruling party that the ruling party cannot take the people's mandate for granted.

OK, let's make it simple, the ruling party BN (Barisan Nasional) has learned and understood the message from the people. Now they are doing "something" to impress the people by showing that they care about every "citizen"'s vote.

At the same time, the opposition gained a platform to show their capabilities. They rule 5 states in which 4 plays important economic role in Malaysia's growth (Penang, Selangor, Perak & Kedah). More or less the federal government can only "on hold" the development of these 4 states to a certain level, because the decline of these states will also make the growth of the Malaysia decline. So these 4 states will somehow perform and will gain grounds. This will show that, despite having big and mean "hurdles", the 4 states under the opposition party can run a state.

OK, now where do we stand 4 to 5 years later. You may say we have to see the results.

Doesn't matter about the results. If any government who just underwent new transformation can make a total turn around in 1 term (4-5 years), they are the greatest people, therefore 1 term is not enough for them to show true performance.

The point is, results shall be very little for both BN and PR, the greatest thing will be their effort. Their effort depends on the kind of support we give. We can support in 2 ways, wait till the next election and vote the deserving party or join the party and show them our faith in their effort.

Which would you do?

Join their party - BN or PR?

Or just vote when time comes?

What would you do?


Subra