Written by Sholto Byrnes
Zaid Ibrahim's venture: mosquito party or the real thing?
Introduced not only by the country's national anthem, but also to the strains of the Rolling Stones' "I can't get no satisfaction," Malaysia's newest political party was officially launched at the Sime Darby Convention Centre in Kuala Lumpur Wednesday.
Kita, the People's Welfare Party, announced its president, Zaid Ibrahim, aims "to bring back the politics of goodwill and compromise that started this nation 54 years ago... so that politics and public service can be made honorable once again."
Neither of the current alternatives would do, he said. The governing Barisan Nasional coalition "will always be autocratic and authoritarian," while the opposition led by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim "says and does whatever it takes for the sake of winning elections."
There was grand, idealistic talk of defending the secular nature of the 1957 constitution, ending discrimination, fighting ideas of "superiority and hegemony" (a reference to the Malay supremacists who would consign the country's Chinese and Indian citizens to permanent second-class status) and ensuring that there were "equal opportunities for all, regardless of caste, colour or creed."
Big words indeed for a new party, however laudable – especially given that the Barisan and its predecessor, the Alliance, centered around three parties representing the country's main races, the Malays, Chinese and Indians, have won every national election since independence. Many would ask, too, why Zaid needs to start another party. Doesn't the opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, stand for more or less the same program as Kita? Moreover, Pakatan's success at the 2008 general election, when it won control of five of Malaysia's 13 states and denied the Barisan the two thirds supermajority in parliament that had allowed it to amend the constitution, is in the past.
Now that the political tsunami has receded, there is much debris left behind for Pakatan to deal with. In February 2009 it lost one state, Perak, back to the Barisan. There have been constant disagreements and bickering over the demands of one of its constituent parties, the Islamist PAS, for hudud (Islamic) laws and an Islamic state to be implemented if they came to power – anathema to its left-leaning coalition partner, the mainly Chinese Democratic Action Party.
Meanwhile Anwar, the leader of Pakatan's other member, Parti Keadilan Rakyat, and of the opposition overall, remains bogged down in another sodomy trial. (The first was after he was fired as deputy prime minister to Dr Mahathir in 1998, and resulted in a conviction, subsequently overturned. The latest charges surfaced in 2008 and led to the current trial which has been going on since last February and shows no sign of ending; it is due to resume next month).
Shouldn't Zaid be doing all he can to help Pakatan Rakyat rather than setting up a new party that will appeal to the same constituency, thereby risking splitting precious opposition votes?
It would be fair to say that Zaid divides opinion. The founder of the country's biggest law firm and renowned for his outspoken defense of human rights, Zaid was hailed as proof that the Barisan was serious about reform when he was appointed by then Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as Law Minister in March 2008. He resigned after six months over the continued use of Malaysia's draconian Internal Security Act, and was welcomed into the ranks of Anwar's Parti Keadilan Rakyat the following June.
Last month, however, he quit PKR as well in a row over internal party elections. While standing for the deputy presidency in November, Zaid alleged serious irregularities with the voting process and turned angrily on Anwar. The election was being rigged and PKR had become a vehicle for its leader and his cronies, he said, adding that the current accusations of sodomy against him were undermining the opposition's cause. As if that wasn't enough, Zaid told me in an interview after his resignation that he thought Anwar was "guilty as hell" in any case.
Some have accused Zaid of arrogance and poor judgment. PKR didn't end up looking like furthering his own ambitions, goes the argument, so he has set up a party (technically, relaunched and renamed a tiny previous grouping) that will. On the other hand, PKR's whiter-than-white reformasi mantle is now beginning to appear striped with dynastic purple now that the party is led by Anwar, its president is his wife, and has as one of its new vice presidents his daughter.
And Zaid's ruthlessly honest analysis of Malaysia's problems, particularly the need for a re-evaluation of the position of the Malays, his calls to an end to rent-seeking and for the building of a new meritocracy that does not unduly stress race or religion, is almost unmatched. Perhaps the only other Malay politician to advance something similar convincingly is Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, the veteran finance minister who is, unusually for an UMNO MP, fondly regarded and admired across the spectrum. Significantly, he wrote the preface to Zaid's latest book, "I, too, am Malay".
What are its chances? Kita has already been dismissed as a "mosquito" party – a minor irritant, but whose bite has no significant impact. Asked what effect it would be likely to have, one leading UMNO MP said it would have none, apart from appealing "to a few people in Bangsar" – a dismissive reference to the Kuala Lumpur enclave with a long and occasionally notorious reputation for liberalism and permissiveness.
If that is brave UMNO talk, the opposition coalition may have more worries. Even if Kita does not field many candidates in the next general election – its ambition in that field is so small that Zaid admitted to me that they may not win "any seats at all" – in Peninsular Malaysia, it could still cost Pakatan dear.
The key industrial state of Selangor, for instance, is already on a knife edge. The Pakatan state government has dealt poorly with a number of issues recently, appearing divided and handing the Barisan propaganda victories over signs bearing the logo of Prime Minister Najib's 1Malaysia policy, the question of whether Muslims should be allowed to work in establishments that serve alcohol, and the appointment of a new state secretary that has led them, disastrously, to be portrayed as being disrespectful to Selangor's sultan. It is not implausible that a few votes siphoned off to Kita could lose Pakatan its proudest gain of the 2008 election.
Zaid's goal, however, is more both more modest and yet more ambitious than insults suggest. His "moderate, democratic and liberal" party, he conceded, was not about to try to win the next general election. "We are in this for the long haul," he said. "Kita is not just a political party; it's a movement, it's an ethos to be handed down to future generations. This is about real change in the way we do business. Because what we have now just isn't working."
And he does have a plan. "The answer is the middle class here," he told me during our interview. Well, that's Bangsar at least.
For a more imminent change, he said, look east. "The answer is Sarawak and Sabah." He elaborated yesterday. The people of Malaysia's Borneo states, who have provided a "fixed deposit" for the Barisan government in terms of MPs for decades, should stop voting "for a regime that has denied them for the best part of our independent years."
Far more non-Malay and non-Muslim than the Peninsula, but with considerable numbers of the indigenous peoples who are legally privileged along with the Malays as bumiputras – sons of the soil, they can be "the lynchpin of change," said Zaid. "They can determine if Malaysia is to remain a cosmopolitan multi-ethnic democracy or be ruled by the politics of hegemony. They can determine if Malaysia is to remain a free, secular democracy or a tyranny of the majority."
Zaid has not only a plan, but an ally in the person of Jeffrey Kitingan, a former PKR vice president who announced the formation of the United Borneo Front to campaign for a better deal for Sarawak and Sabah on the same day Zaid unveiled news of Kita last month.
As Kitingan pointed out recently: "West Malaysians take up 166 seats in parliament which are fragmented almost 50/50 after the 2008 elections. If all 56 Sabah and Sarawak MPs amalgamated and had the Borneo Agenda at the forefront of their hearts and their minds, they will be able to have a greater say in parliament."
All pie-in-the-sky? Maybe. But look at the proposals so far, and what you find is a new, loose alliance that speaks to a genuinely multiracial audience, that promises to safeguard but also give a fairer deal to all bumiputra, whether Malay or not, while ending discriminatory practices against Chinese and Indians and acknowledging their contribution to Malaysia. Oh, and guaranteeing the superiority of civil law over shariah courts and protecting freedom of religion.
Zaid talked a lot yesterday about the country's founding prime minister, the genial, tolerant Tunku Abdul Rahman. Actually, he is going further than the Tunku would ever have dared in terms of urging a unity that does not over-privilege one section of society, or its faith, over another. It sounded, in fact, rather a lot like a new Malaysia. Were it not already the title of someone else's policy, he could even have called it a One Malaysia. Now there's a thought....
Sholto Byrnes is a contributing editor of the New Statesman (UK) and divides his time between London and Kuala Lumpur.
Showing posts with label umno. Show all posts
Showing posts with label umno. Show all posts
Friday, January 21, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Malaysia's One-Two Punch for Journalism
Bloggers to face sedition law, a prominent journalist is suspended
Malaysia suffered two ominous blows to independent journalism last week, one with the announcement that the government is about to formulate a sedition law to cover bloggers, who are fast becoming some of the most independent news providers in Malaysia.
The second was the suspension of the National Union of Journalists President Hata Wahari from his job at the Malay-language daily Utusan Malaysia, one of several newspapers controlled by the United Malays National Organization, the country's biggest political party, for advocating an impartial press.
Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's Home Affairs Minister, announced on Jan. 13 that the federal government will write guidelines to define "online sedition," a move which critics say is an overt attempt at cyberspace censorship.
"On a whole, officers from the home ministry, PM's department and the information ministry have agreed on the contents of the guidelines," Hishammuddin said in a prepared statement, adding that seditious items are expected to include "malicious news," pornography, false information and other cyber crimes.
No one knows just what will be in the new law. "We actually have no clue at this point, the government has not even had a public airing, there has been no consultation with the press itself," said Chuah Siew Eng, program officer for the Center for Independent Journalism in Kuala Lumpur. "We can only rely on news reports. There is no freedom of information law that would force them to divulge what is in it."
"What we're seeing in Malaysia is part of a much longer-term trend," said Bob Dietz, Asia Program Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. "The country never really emerged from the Mahathir years in the same way, say, that Indonesia had from Suharto. As Internet activity has grown the people in power – UMNO – have had to distance themselves from Mahathir's promise not to interfere with online activity. Frankly, resorting to sedition charges to control press activity – traditional or digital – is a tactic we regularly see in other countries where the government is straining to stay in power."
Other critics were quick to point out that Malaysia's existing sedition law, a holdover from British colonial Malaya in 1948, has already been used on bloggers. Chuah Siew Eng pointed out the government threatened sedition charges against bloggers who insulted the memory of the late Sultan of Johor. Last year, authorities also threatened sedition charges against Asia Sentinel for critical reporting on the country but never followed through.
However, many observers agree that a main target is Raja Petra Kamarudin, the irrepressible editor of the online publication Malaysia Today, who fled the country ahead of charges of criminal libel and sedition for, among other things, suggesting incorrectly that Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's wife Rosmah Mansour was present at the murder of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu in 2006. Two of Najib's bodyguards were convicted of the murder and, although one confessed that they were to be paid RM100,000 to kill the woman, no attempt was ever made to find out who was going to pay them.
"I think there is no reason for such a law," said Tony Pua, an opposition Democratic Action Party Member of Parliament and prominent blogger, in a telephone interview. "Existing laws are very easy to use, broad and nonspecific. The sedition act itself should be repealed or substantially reduced in terms of scope."
That seems unlikely to happen. In particular, Malaysia's growing legions of bloggers played a major role in the relative drubbing that the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition took in national elections in 2008, winning only 51.1 percent of the popular vote and running behind the three opposition parties on the mainland. It lost the three most urbanized and industrialized states – Perak, Penang and Selangor but was saved partly by gerrymandered constituencies long-rigged in its favor, and partly by Sabah and Sarawak, which voted solidly for the status quo. For the first time since independence, the Barisan lost its two-thirds lock on the Dewan Rakyat, or parliament.
As to Hata, the Utusan Malaysia reporter, on Jan. 11, the Malay-language daily informed the veteran reporter that he would be suspended until the completion of an investigation into charges that he had tarnished the newspaper with statements he made to independent media last year calling for press freedom. He has criticised Utusan several times for publishing pro-Umno propaganda and blamed its editorial policy for the dwindling circulation of the UMNO flagship paper, which once boasted the highest daily circulation in Malaysia but has now fallen to sixth.
He faces eight counts of misconduct for issuing statements to news portals and is expected to face a disciplinary hearing on Jan. 17 and, say other reporters, is likely to be fired.
A 16-year veteran reporter with Utusan, Hata was elected president of the country's National Union of Journalists in September. If he is sacked, he would be the third Utusan employee to lose his job because of his activity with the journalist union. Former NUJ president Yazid Othman and NUJ-Utusan Malaysia chairperson Amran Ahmad were also dismissed earlier. If he loses in disciplinary hearing on Jan. 17, he will also be forced to give up the chairmanship of the nUH.
The letter informing Hata of his suspension was draconian at least. He was not only ordered to stay out of anyUtusan Melayu offices but stated that he was not allowed to "leave his neighborhood" and would have to be in areas that are reachable by the company "at all times." He is also barred from bringing in outside counsel to the disciplinary hearing and must rely on the NUJ branch at Utusan Malaysia for assistance.
V Anbalagan, the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, told the online publication Malaysiakini that the directive to impose "house arrest" on Hata was utter nonsense.
"I don't know where Utusan derived their power from. Which law says it can do this? Utusan is not the police, nor is it the Attorney-General's Chambers," he said.
He added that while he will be present at the daily's headquarters in Kuala Lumpur in an attempt to represent Hata, the NUJ will still adopt a wait-and-see approach until the decision from the inquiry is made.
"We just want to go through due process. We want to fight the DI (domestic inquiry) first. We are not going to protest now, but we will wait for the outcome of the DI," said Anbalagan.
Following Utusan's suspension of Hata, a Facebook group has sprung to his support for those who wish to register their objection to his treatment.
Note: article from ASIA SENTINEL
Malaysia suffered two ominous blows to independent journalism last week, one with the announcement that the government is about to formulate a sedition law to cover bloggers, who are fast becoming some of the most independent news providers in Malaysia.
The second was the suspension of the National Union of Journalists President Hata Wahari from his job at the Malay-language daily Utusan Malaysia, one of several newspapers controlled by the United Malays National Organization, the country's biggest political party, for advocating an impartial press.
Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's Home Affairs Minister, announced on Jan. 13 that the federal government will write guidelines to define "online sedition," a move which critics say is an overt attempt at cyberspace censorship.
"On a whole, officers from the home ministry, PM's department and the information ministry have agreed on the contents of the guidelines," Hishammuddin said in a prepared statement, adding that seditious items are expected to include "malicious news," pornography, false information and other cyber crimes.
No one knows just what will be in the new law. "We actually have no clue at this point, the government has not even had a public airing, there has been no consultation with the press itself," said Chuah Siew Eng, program officer for the Center for Independent Journalism in Kuala Lumpur. "We can only rely on news reports. There is no freedom of information law that would force them to divulge what is in it."
"What we're seeing in Malaysia is part of a much longer-term trend," said Bob Dietz, Asia Program Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. "The country never really emerged from the Mahathir years in the same way, say, that Indonesia had from Suharto. As Internet activity has grown the people in power – UMNO – have had to distance themselves from Mahathir's promise not to interfere with online activity. Frankly, resorting to sedition charges to control press activity – traditional or digital – is a tactic we regularly see in other countries where the government is straining to stay in power."
Other critics were quick to point out that Malaysia's existing sedition law, a holdover from British colonial Malaya in 1948, has already been used on bloggers. Chuah Siew Eng pointed out the government threatened sedition charges against bloggers who insulted the memory of the late Sultan of Johor. Last year, authorities also threatened sedition charges against Asia Sentinel for critical reporting on the country but never followed through.
However, many observers agree that a main target is Raja Petra Kamarudin, the irrepressible editor of the online publication Malaysia Today, who fled the country ahead of charges of criminal libel and sedition for, among other things, suggesting incorrectly that Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's wife Rosmah Mansour was present at the murder of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu in 2006. Two of Najib's bodyguards were convicted of the murder and, although one confessed that they were to be paid RM100,000 to kill the woman, no attempt was ever made to find out who was going to pay them.
"I think there is no reason for such a law," said Tony Pua, an opposition Democratic Action Party Member of Parliament and prominent blogger, in a telephone interview. "Existing laws are very easy to use, broad and nonspecific. The sedition act itself should be repealed or substantially reduced in terms of scope."
That seems unlikely to happen. In particular, Malaysia's growing legions of bloggers played a major role in the relative drubbing that the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition took in national elections in 2008, winning only 51.1 percent of the popular vote and running behind the three opposition parties on the mainland. It lost the three most urbanized and industrialized states – Perak, Penang and Selangor but was saved partly by gerrymandered constituencies long-rigged in its favor, and partly by Sabah and Sarawak, which voted solidly for the status quo. For the first time since independence, the Barisan lost its two-thirds lock on the Dewan Rakyat, or parliament.
As to Hata, the Utusan Malaysia reporter, on Jan. 11, the Malay-language daily informed the veteran reporter that he would be suspended until the completion of an investigation into charges that he had tarnished the newspaper with statements he made to independent media last year calling for press freedom. He has criticised Utusan several times for publishing pro-Umno propaganda and blamed its editorial policy for the dwindling circulation of the UMNO flagship paper, which once boasted the highest daily circulation in Malaysia but has now fallen to sixth.
He faces eight counts of misconduct for issuing statements to news portals and is expected to face a disciplinary hearing on Jan. 17 and, say other reporters, is likely to be fired.
A 16-year veteran reporter with Utusan, Hata was elected president of the country's National Union of Journalists in September. If he is sacked, he would be the third Utusan employee to lose his job because of his activity with the journalist union. Former NUJ president Yazid Othman and NUJ-Utusan Malaysia chairperson Amran Ahmad were also dismissed earlier. If he loses in disciplinary hearing on Jan. 17, he will also be forced to give up the chairmanship of the nUH.
The letter informing Hata of his suspension was draconian at least. He was not only ordered to stay out of anyUtusan Melayu offices but stated that he was not allowed to "leave his neighborhood" and would have to be in areas that are reachable by the company "at all times." He is also barred from bringing in outside counsel to the disciplinary hearing and must rely on the NUJ branch at Utusan Malaysia for assistance.
V Anbalagan, the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, told the online publication Malaysiakini that the directive to impose "house arrest" on Hata was utter nonsense.
"I don't know where Utusan derived their power from. Which law says it can do this? Utusan is not the police, nor is it the Attorney-General's Chambers," he said.
He added that while he will be present at the daily's headquarters in Kuala Lumpur in an attempt to represent Hata, the NUJ will still adopt a wait-and-see approach until the decision from the inquiry is made.
"We just want to go through due process. We want to fight the DI (domestic inquiry) first. We are not going to protest now, but we will wait for the outcome of the DI," said Anbalagan.
Following Utusan's suspension of Hata, a Facebook group has sprung to his support for those who wish to register their objection to his treatment.
Note: article from ASIA SENTINEL
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