Anwar Ibrahim |
- Anwar Ibrahim Again Battles Dubious Sex Sharges
- Umno Mahu Taib Undur, Untuk Kuasai Sarawak
- Malaysia’s New Journey
| Anwar Ibrahim Again Battles Dubious Sex Sharges Posted: 27 Aug 2010 04:01 PM PDT From The Globe And Mail There is an uncomfortable pattern to life for Anwar Ibrahim, the charismatic leader of Malaysia's opposition. In 1998, shortly after he quit the authoritarian government of Mahathir bin Mohamad, he was convicted and jailed on trumped-up sodomy charges. Six years after that conviction was quashed and he was released from prison – and just as it looked like he and his multi-ethnic coalition might finally oust the long-ruling United National Malays Organization from office – Mr. Anwar finds himself trapped in the most awkward of reruns, once more accused of "consensual intercourse against the order of nature." The charges again look to be a thinly veiled attempt to ruin Mr. Anwar's reputation and sabotage his political career in this Muslim-majority country. The trial to date – dubbed "Sodomy II" in Malaysia's unsubtle government-controlled press – has produced a succession of lurid headlines about lubricant tubes and stained underwear, while Mr. Anwar and his lawyers have been denied the right even to see the medical records of the man with which he is alleged to have had anal sex. But instead of letting the scandalous court proceedings force him to the sidelines, the eternally optimistic Mr. Anwar has been using good humour and his ever-present BlackBerry to turn even the most awkward of headlines to his advantage, holding up the charges against him as proof of the absurdity of the system he's trying to change. As a lone judge contemplates whether there is evidence to convict Mr. Anwar and sentence him to up to 20 years in prison, as well as a flogging, Mr. Anwar has continued his ferocious assault on a government he derides as repressive and corrupt, blogging from the courtroom and sending cheeky and upbeat 140-character updates to his followers via Twitter. "Sodomy circus turns into sex opera!" reads one of Mr. Anwar's mid-trial posts, which linked to a video of a lawyer discussing the lurid details of the case. "Courage of conviction. Que sera sera," was his response to a fellow Twitter user who worried the energetic 63-year-old was headed back to jail. The odds do seem stacked against Mr. Anwar, a former deputy prime minister who was once considered the rising star of Malaysian politics. But to hear him tell it, his déjà-vu legal ordeal is evidence that Prime Minister Najib Razak and his party are losing their grip on power, and they know it well. "They can't deal with me politically – either my economic programs or policies. They can't debate me. So they resort to this ludicrous exercise to demonize me," he said in an interview at the offices of his People's Justice Party in western Kuala Lumpur, a confident grin fixed on his narrow, goateed face. "We will win the next election and we will change the courts." It seems unlikely things will go quite that smoothly. Mr. Anwar's political career has seen his fortunes change as often and as quickly as the weather in this peninsula thrust between the Indian and Pacific oceans. The leader of a Muslim youth organization during his student days, he shocked his followers by joining UNMO in the early 1980s and taking a succession of cabinet posts in the authoritarian government of Mr. Mahathir, eventually rising to become his powerful finance minister and deputy prime minister. But the two men never saw eye-to-eye on key issues, and they eventually fell out during the 1997 Asian financial crisis over economic policy and Mr. Anwar's accusation that cronyism at the top was hurting the country's economy. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Anwar – frequently held up in the West as an example of a moderate Muslim democrat – was in jail. Though initially barred from politics upon his release, Mr. Anwar steered the opposition to a surprisingly strong finish in 2008 elections, and – even as the new sodomy charges were being laid –very nearly won the long-sought prime minister's chair in the aftermath when he called for a vote of non-confidence in Mr. Najib's government. Mr. Anwar said he had the support of a majority in parliament, including an unspecified number of UMNO defectors, but the vote never happened. Instead, 40 key lawmakers were sent on a government junket to Taiwan during which some were apparently convinced to rethink supporting Mr. Anwar's bid for power. The next election, which can be called any time before 2013, is set to be a high-stakes affair in this rapidly developing country of 28 million, which has seen freedom of speech blossom since the 2003 retirement of Mr. Mahathir and the rise of the Internet. Any kind of conviction would keep Mr. Anwar – who heads an improbable coalition that consists of liberal reformers like himself and an Islamist party that seeks to impose Koranic law – on the sidelines for another five years. Mr. Anwar, a married father of six children, denies the new charges that he had sex with a 25-year-old former aide to Mr. Najib. (The sodomy law, which dates back to the British colonial era, has only been used seven times since independence, with four of those charges being levelled against Mr. Anwar.) The case recently devolved into further farce when it surfaced that the complainant was having an affair with a member of the prosecution team. Though Judge Mohamad Zabidin Diah acknowledged the affair as fact, he denied Mr. Anwar's application to have the charges thrown out on that basis. Mr. Anwar, who counts Al Gore, Nelson Mandela and former Canadian prime minister Paul Martin among his friends, said that while the Malaysian court system would do him no favours, he thinks his case is high-profile enough that the government won't dare jail him again. "It's a catch-22 for them. If they put me in jail, they invoke more sympathy, certainly the government will lose … And unlike Mahathir, Najib wants to be seen to be acceptable in the international community." Mr. Anwar's undimmed ambition to be prime minister clearly infuriates his political opponents. Even in retirement, his mentor-turned-nemesis Mr. Mahathir uses his own blog to mock his former protégé and lash back at accusations that the case against Mr. Anwar is trumped up. "Could it be that it was actually the victim of anal rape who decided to tell things as they happened? I would like to say we should wait for the court to decide, but that can take a very long, long time or even never," Mr. Mahathir wrote recently. Despite a near-complete ban on his speaking to the official media, Mr. Anwar appears to be winning the public-relations battle, in part because of his savvy online efforts. A poll conducted by the independent Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research shortly after the new charges were filed found that only 11 per cent of the more than 1,000 respondents believed the new sodomy allegations against Mr. Anwar. Two-thirds said they agreed with the statement that the trial was "a politically motivated action to disrupt Anwar Ibrahim's political career." This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Umno Mahu Taib Undur, Untuk Kuasai Sarawak Posted: 27 Aug 2010 03:43 PM PDT Dari Harakah PAS melihat Umno kini terdesak untuk menyingkirkan Ketua Menteri Sarawak, Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud selepas Ketua Penerangan PAS, Idris Ahmad berkata, tekanan tersebut sama seperti dilakukan Umno ketika mahu menjatuhkan Mahathir dan Pak Lah. Ianya sewaktu kedua-duanya dituduh sebagai punca Kekalahan BN dalam pilihanraya Umum 1999 dan 2008. Umno ujar Idris mahu menguasai Sarawak dengan menyingkirkan Taib yang kini presiden Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB). Ini kerana di Semenanjung Umno sudah kehilangan sokongan majoriti besar rakyat Melayu. “PAS melihat, kejatuhan Taib Mahmud akan menjadi perintis kepada pembubaran PBB sama seperti USNO yang lenyap selepas Umno tiba di Sabah. “Umno kini bercita-cita untuk menjadikan negeri itu sebagai destinasi terbarunya berikutan trend sokongan rakyat kepada BN di Borneo yang masih lagi memberikan ruang untuk Umno-BN bernafas,” katanya. PAS juga katanya sedar parti-parti komponen BN yang lain sudah muak melihat keangkuhan Umno yang mahu mendominasi BN. “PAS menasihatkan agar parti-parti komponen BN memikirkan kerelevenan untuk mereka bersama Umno yang kini seolah-olah dilihat sedang menjadi “Maharaja dalam BN”. “Pas menyeru supaya parti komponen BN dipersilakan untuk menyertai Pakatan Rakyat untuk kita membentuk satu kehidupan baru,” pelawanya. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 27 Aug 2010 03:02 PM PDT From Time Magazine Malaysia is that rare country with an unequivocal national narrative. It goes something like this: Malaysia’s 28 million people, comprising mainly Malays, Chinese and Indians, make up a moderate and modern emerging democracy. Unlike members of other multiethnic countries, they respect one another’s beliefs and values and share a commitment to achieving prosperity. The official religion is Islam, but other faiths are freely allowed and celebrated. This is one harmonious place. Much of that narrative is true — but not all of it. Malaysia’s economic miracle has stalled, and while the nation is, indeed, somewhat pluralistic, it is no melting pot. Indeed, it is a society where people define themselves first and foremost by race. The country’s political leadership has in some respects reinforced those ethnic identities. For the past 40 years, policymakers have doled out special privileges — in education and business — to one community: the majority Malays. The program is one of modern history’s greatest experiments in social engineering and possibly the world’s most extensive attempt at affirmative action. But the policies have also bred resentment among minorities, distorted the economy and undermined the concept of a single Malaysian identity. Now a movement is gaining strength to finally change the system — and it’s coming from the very top. Prime Minister Najib Razak, 57, has surprised the country by advocating a fundamental reform of the pro-Malay program first introduced, ironically, by his father, who was Malaysia’s Prime Minister in the 1970s. Though the specifics of the new policies remain hazy, Najib’s intent is not. “I want Malaysia to be globally competitive,” he told TIME in an exclusive interview. “For that, we need to get every single Malaysian to be together.” Najib’s proposals have simultaneously raised hopes, ire and fear. The mere idea of changing the affirmative-action system has reopened old wounds in Malaysian society and reactivated the long-running debate on how best to fuse Malays, Chinese and Indians into one nation. The direction Malaysia takes, moreover, has repercussions beyond its shores. The issues raised by Najib’s proposals are relevant to any upwardly mobile developing economy, especially a multicultural one: how to increase wealth and do so equitably. In confronting these sensitive challenges, Najib is taking enormous political risks. The primary base of electoral support for Najib’s political party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), is the Malay community, and altering decades-old perquisites could cause voters to defect to the opposition. But Najib believes he has little choice. If Malaysia’s economy is to compete with China, India and other rapidly emerging neighbors, Najib sees no other route but reform. “The competition is much greater and some would describe it even as cutthroat,” Najib says. “There is a realization that what has worked in the past may not necessarily work in the future.” The Malay Card It is also controversial. Critics contend that the pro-Malay program too often benefits the connected few over its intended targets: the poor and struggling. All car-import permits, for example, are awarded to bumiputra-controlled firms, a policy intended to foster entrepreneurs in the community. But government audits have revealed that Malay businessmen with access to the permits sometimes sell them to minority traders who don’t — at an instant profit. (The Ministry of Trade and Industry, recognizing the problem, says it will phase out the permit system by 2020.) “Unfortunately, as [the NEP] was implemented over time, some of the zealots, politicians and bureaucrats included, tended to become more racial and emphasized more on the people who have relationships with them,” says Razaleigh Hamzah, an UMNO dignitary and former Finance Minister. “That’s where it went wrong.” Despite four decades of special aid, 3 in 4 of the poorest people in Malaysia are still bumiputra. Adli Ahmad Ghazi, the Malay co-owner of Malaysian Defensive Driving & Riding, a 70-employee driving school in Kuala Lumpur, complains that the pro-Malay policies do little to help a small businessman like himself. In 2008, Adli tried to get financing from three agencies tasked with supporting Malay businessmen or small enterprises, but got rejected. When he has to deal with the bureaucracy, Adli says, he faces the same red tape as any other businessman. It took him two years to buy a parcel of land for his company from the local government. “The [NEP] rules don’t really apply to people on the ground,” Adli says. “They say the NEP would help the Malays, but it only helps a small percentage of the Malays.” Comfort Zone Malaysia’s struggles reflect those facing Southeast Asia as a whole. The region’s economies once seemed among the world’s most promising emerging markets, but in recent years, progress in almost all of them has been stymied by upheaval and poor governance. Thailand remains rudderless as its fragile democracy has degenerated into perpetual factional strife. The promise of the Philippines remains unrealized as its feeble government has continually failed to enact the tough reforms needed to turn around the underperforming economy. Indonesia is only now returning to its place as one of the world’s premier emerging economies after a decade of political uncertainty scared off foreign investors. If it is able to change its economic system, Malaysia could show its neighbors the way forward. Malaysia’s essential problem is that its growth model — export-oriented manufacturing, often by foreign-invested factories — has become mismatched with its needs. Malaysia must become more innovative if its rapid development is to continue. But that’s not happening. Private investment has fallen from a third of GDP in the mid-1990s to only about 10% today, labor-productivity growth has slowed, and R&D spending remains anemic. Instead of developing new products with highly skilled technicians, Malaysia’s manufacturing sector still too often assembles goods designed by others, using imported technology and low-skilled foreign workers. “There is a growing realization that Malaysia’s relative position compared to other countries that are catching up very quickly is not improving,” says Philip Schellekens, a senior economist at the World Bank. “Relative to where they want to be, there is still a long road.” Though it would be incorrect to blame the pro-Malay policies for the economy’s woes — Malaysia did, once, achieve remarkable rates of growth with the perquisites in place — they are nevertheless dampening business sentiment, scaring off talent, curtailing investment and stifling domestic competition. Chua Tiam Wee, president of the SMI Association of Malaysia, a small-enterprise organization, believes relaxing the NEP preferences would create a more level playing field on which the most capable firms could advance, making the economy more merit-based and upgrading Malaysian industry. The affirmative-action policy is “a source of a lot of distortions to the economic system,” Chua says. By limiting the opportunities available to minorities, the NEP is likely contributing to a brain drain, in which some of the country’s most talented people choose to work elsewhere. The government estimates that more than half of the 350,000 Malaysians working abroad have a college education. Stéphane Garelli, director of the World Competitiveness Center at IMD, a business school in Switzerland, believes that the affirmative-action regulations have made Malaysia less attractive to foreign investors. Malaysia’s “bargaining power to put such restrictions on foreign investors is not as big as other nations’,” he says. Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs in Malaysia certainly believe the pro-Malay policies cap their business opportunities. Pardip Kumar Kukreja, the Malaysian-Indian chairman of Grand Paradise Holdings, a Kuala Lumpur — based firm that manages and owns hotels and operates travel agencies, laments that he can’t get access to lucrative contracts providing travel services to the government due to regulations that favor Malay-owned enterprises. Removing such restrictions, he says, can act as an incentive to invest. Kukreja recently decided to launch an Internet-based business to sell travel services worldwide because Najib’s administration liberalized affirmative-action rules for the tourism sector last year. “There are many things we’d like to do, which we hope we’ll be able to do in the near future,” he says. “To a small and medium entrepreneur, he wants to make his own decisions.” New and Untested There are urgent political reasons he feels that way. UMNO, which has ruled Malaysia in coalition since its independence from Britain in 1957, lost ground to opposition parties in a hotly contested 2008 general election, and Najib is faced with the daunting prospect of expanding UMNO’s political base outside its core Malay constituency. The NEM is an effort by Najib to turn stodgy UMNO into the party of change and outmaneuver its rivals. Some powerful voices within UMNO are egging on Najib to push his reforms. “We have to be bold and brave to ensure [our] long-term competitiveness,” says Khairy Jamaluddin, an UMNO member of Parliament. Yet Najib has also come under pressure from conservative elements in the Malay community to hold back. “The bumiputra are still lagging behind,” complains Ibrahim Ali, president of Malay nationalist organization Perkasa. “If the economy is not balanced, then everything will lead to trouble.” As a result, Najib doesn’t have full support from an UMNO worried about scaring off Malay voters. Najib’s reform program “is a tough sell within the party,” admits Khairy. “There will be people who resist the changes.” The split in UMNO reflects the greater divide within the Malay community over the future of affirmative action. Some Malays believe that they still don’t possess the skills and resources to contend against Chinese businessmen, making continued affirmative-action policies indispensable. The program “should stay in place and improve,” says Rizal Faris, president of the Penang Malay Chamber of Commerce. “What [officials] want to achieve is a level playing field where all parties are able to compete on their merits, but we need to ensure that the Malay community has been sufficiently skilled and pulled up.” But others believe the time has come for Malays to step up and compete on their own, without special government aid. Akmal Syahirah, a 21-year-old law student at the University of Malaya, says that affirmative action should be eliminated, even though her family has greatly benefited from it in the past. Her father acquired land to produce palm oil through a pro-Malay development scheme, and her three younger sisters received tuition for extra after-school studies. But now, “I think we need to change,” she says. “We can’t just let Malays stay in their comfort zone.” Balancing Act Even as he faces the daunting task of reforming Malaysia, Najib must deal with the domestic and international fallout from the divisive trial of Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition’s most prominent leader. In 2008, only months after the opposition’s electoral success, Anwar was charged with sodomy, a serious crime in Malaysia. The trial has a déjà vu flavor. Anwar was convicted of sodomy in 2000 (and abuse of power a year earlier), but the ruling was overturned in 2004 and he was freed after six years in prison. Anwar has pleaded not guilty to the latest charge and attacked his trial as a politically motivated attempt to discredit the opposition. The government denies that, saying the courts have a duty to conduct a fair trial. Yet the case has tainted Najib’s administration. In a joint essay in the Wall Street Journal, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz wrote that Anwar’s trial threatens “all those in Malaysia who have struggled for a freer and more democratic nation.” The biggest test for Najib still awaits. All eyes are watching for the detailed policy prescriptions of Najib’s NEM, which could be released in October. Some Malaysia experts expect the final package to be underwhelming. Najib “doesn’t have the strength to follow through, whether politically or personally,” says John Malott, a former U.S. ambassador to Malaysia. “He’s not a transformational figure.” Najib insists his critics underestimate him. “I want to transform Malaysia,” Najib says. “I want Malaysia to be a 21st century nation and I am determined to do that.” Malaysia’s future — and new narrative — depends on it. — with reporting by Liz Gooch And M. Krishnamoorthy / Kuala Lumpur |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Anwar Ibrahim To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
Tiada ulasan:
Catat Ulasan