This is ridiculous…

Misplaced loyalty from a former premier who shaped the future of the nation? Or is it just blind hatred towards the present number one? Or is he bordering on senility?

His latest move is to urge all BN MPs to lompat to become independents, and then return to BN after the removal of the PM.

This latest call by him changes his use of Umno/Malay sentiments to trying to influence the BN cadres to remove the PM.

Is he being fair to the voters?

Read his latest blog entry here.

How should Pak Lah react?

Now that Mahathir has decided to quit Umno in protest to force Abdullah to step down, it is inevitable that in the coming days a few more shocks will happen.

There will be some pockets of party members who will join MM in leaving the party. Some pundits are even saying that some 200 divisions in Johor alone are ready to follow suit.

Likewise I am sure some veterans will also follow MM. But, how about Umno MPs and state level leaders? Would they jump the ship as well?

I highly doubt it. I think it would be against their self-interest for any minister, deputy minister or and MP to quit the party now.

As it is Abdullah is holding a meeting with Umno MPs today and tomorrow he would have a similar meeting with BN MPs. What will follow is a BN meeting and then Umno supreme council meeting.

I am sure they will discuss the repercussions of MM’s decision and on Abdullah’s future as well.

There are two strong messages which Abdullah and Umno can give MM. They are:

1. Thank you for all your services and now that you have resigned, we hope you will have a good rest. Do enjoy your break.

2. Do not get yourself involved in local politics, especially in Umno politics, as you no longer have the standing to comment on a party which you are no longer a member.

At the same time, MM should be reminded to be prepared to defend himself in court IF he is to be tried for the conspiracy in the appointment of friendly judges, as recommended by the Lingam tape commission.

He should also be reminded to keep himself occupied with completing his memoir.

And finally someone should ask MM as to the real reason he is doing this.

Is it because he loves the party too much that he can’t sit and watch Abdullah ruining it, thus wanting him to be replaced by Najib or Muhyiddin or even Tengku Razaleigh?

OR, is it because he is afraid that Anwar Ibrahim will take over the government if Abdullah remained in power?

MM must openly explain if it’s his dislike of Abdullah or fear of Anwar coming back to haunt him.

Dr M speaks (writes) out..

Below is Tun Mahathir’s take on the Pak Lah-palace tiff over the Terengganu MB post. The former premier also speaks about his ‘clean’ legacy, on why people have no faith in the government, on the recent calls made for him to apologise to Salleh Abas and as well as his sharp rebuke against Zaid Ibrahim.

The article is also available here

Ask Commission to apologise

By Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad

PETALING JAYA (March 27, 2008): A Concerned Malaysian has expressed his worry over the role being played by Sultans in the appointment of the Mentri Besar.

His Royal Highnesses have clearly refused to take the advice of the Chief Minister i.e. the Prime Minister. Instead, they have chosen on their own a member of the state legislature to head the Government.

We hear a lot of opinions on the propriety of the action by the Sultan. Some say he has the right to do this while others point out that as a constitutional ruler, he could not do this.

The Constitution says that the Ruler or Head of State must choose the elected member who enjoys the support of the majority of members in the legislative body to be the Prime Minister or the Mentri Besar. Subject to this provision, the Ruler it is who chooses and appoints the Prime Minister or Mentri Besar.

The Prime Minister, as Prime Minister, has no role in the choice of the State Mentri Besar or Ketua Menteri. His naming of candidate who should be the Mentri Besar is purely a party matter. Obviously, if the State is captured by the Opposition Party, he cannot name the candidate.

However, if the Ruler chooses someone who does not enjoy majority support, he could be deposed at a sitting of the legislative body through a vote of "no confidence".

After that, another member can be appointed by the Ruler to take his place. But if for some reason, there is no other candidate or the candidate with majority support is considered unsuitable by the Ruler, a new Government cannot be formed. The Ruler may then dissolve the legislative body and a new election may be held.

This new election may lead to the same impasse. The Ruler may not like the member with majority support.

However, it should be noted that this kind of thing had never happened during the premiership of the four previous Prime Ministers. Concerned Malaysians should wonder why.

Is it just that the particular Ruler is being difficult, unwilling to accept the principles of democracy, wanting to return to feudalism and the absolute authority of the monarch?

I do not think so. There must be a reason why the Ruler refuses to accept the candidate named by the party. But the Ruler chooses not to reveal the reasons and indulge in public debates. He merely expresses his displeasure by refusing to do what normally the Rulers would do.

Concerned Malaysians must ask what has the particular candidate done which is so wrong that it incurs the displeasure of the Ruler.

There are lots of talks in the town. Terengganu is blessed with petroleum deposits. It should get 5% of the total earning from oil production. The Federal Government; fearing the previous PAS government might use this money wrongly had withheld payment.

But when the Barisan Nasional (BN) regained Terengganu the money, now called "Wang Ehsan", was lavishly spent by the Federal Government on Terengganu. It is not a small sum. Over these years "Wang Ehsan" totalled several billion.

We know that since the BN regained Terengganu in 2004, all kinds of projects have been developed in Terengganu. This includes The Monsoon Cup, luxury housing for sale to foreigners, Crystal Mosque and theme park, university, etc. Some of these projects are very good but many are totally unnecessary and wasteful.

But what the Terengganu people are saying is that all these mega projects costing billions of Ringgit have been contracted out to people outside Terengganu. Terengganu contractors got practically nothing.

But additionally, they say the contracts all went to one person and they are suspicious that behind this person are members of the first family.The rumours also say that the previous Mentri Besar was responsible for these things happening and of course, they think that he might have benefited financially.

The rumours went on to say that the Prime Minister might have influenced the Mentri Besar into doing wrong things. These are all rumours. It will be quite impossible to prove anything as the perpetrators are skilled in hiding themselves.

This is not good for a Government keen to abolish corruption and be transparent. To clear its name, an investigation should be made.

But the public is leery of investigations by Government agencies and departments. Even Royal Commissions are not highly regarded. The people believe, not true of course, that the Government has been interfering with the work of the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA), the Police and the Attorney General (A-G)'s Chambers. The say this is borne out by the results of investigations by these agencies.

When a Deputy Minister was accused of accepting money for the release of a detainee, the A-G said there was no case because the detainee said he did not give any money to the Deputy Minister. It is so easy. If you have a case involving someone, all the enforcement agencies need to do is to ask him whether he was involved. If he says "no", then there is no case.

For some reason, judges are finding that people accused of murder are not guilty because of insufficient evidence by the police. Yet people who are totally not involved in a case, who were not accused of any misdeeds and who did not appear in court at all and been given a hearing are found guilty and publicly condemned.

The public cannot be blamed for not having faith in Government agencies doing investigations. The public cannot be blamed for suspecting cover-ups by the Government or worse still the Government may be using these enforcement agencies to threaten people.

To clear its good name, the Government should get credible foreign agencies to do the investigation. Of course, they must be given full access to the documents etc.

Now my detractors are going to say I did worse things when I was Prime Minister. Well, if that is so, let us have the foreign agencies investigate me also. I am aware that people are looking into possible misdeeds by me during my 22 years so as to threaten me and ask me to shut up. So far they have not found anything.

Not only have I not taken anything that was not due to me while I was Prime Minister but I have given back to the Government and the people everything that I had received as gifts during my tenure of office.

The Government had offered me land in Kedah and Langkawi and I had refused to accept. I have a 5-acre plot in Putrajaya which I paid for even though the Government was offering it to me free.

Unless there is a frame-up, I think there should be nothing to pin on me. Even other accusations against me, including the dismissal of judges, were not my doing and I do not feel obliged to apologise. Ask the Tribunal to apologise.

The person asking that the Government should apologise for what happened to Tun Salleh Abbas may have forgotten that as President of the Muslim Lawyers Association, he fully supported the action that was taken. He castigated the Bar Council for condemning Tun Hamid Omar over the dismissal of judges. Now he wants to be more correct than correct. I wonder why.

So it’s no longer defamatory to call him that?

There was a High Court ruling today which said that the former deputy prime minister was not defamed by his former boss who called him a "sodomiser".

The ruling, albeit without a full trial, stated that the term as used was justified and uttered in the interest of the public.

This defamation suit, to the amount of RM100 million, is the second such suit by the former deputy premier against the former premier.

The judge today pointed this out and said the words uttered were identical to the words complained of in the 1999 defamation action.

She then said the findings of the High Court in 1999 to dismiss the suit was applicable now as well.

But more damaging, she said that there was a judicial finding that the former deputy prime minister had indeed taken part in homosexual acts.

She was referring to the finding made by the High Court when the politician was convicted on the charge of sodomosing his former family driver. This conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeal and although a further appeal was allowed by the Federal Court by a majority decision.

But this part of the original ruling was never in dispute:

"... we find evidence to confirm that the appellants were involved in homosexual activities and we are more inclined to believe that the alleged incident at Tivoli Villa did happen, sometime..."

Now, my question is this.

With the standing High Court decision and the civil court ruling today, would it mean that we can use the alleged defamatory term against the former deputy premier without defaming him!

Of course, we shall await his appeal to the Court of Appeal against the defamation suit for better clarification.

Controversy is never far from Dr M

At the end of his three-day War Crimes Conference, Mahathir left the crowd pondering by giving thumbs up to the Iraqi resistence fighters.

He congratulated the Iraqi resistence forces fighting the US-led military occupation of Iraq, urging them to "make sure the Americans pay a very high price for their adventure".

"I congratulate them, the Iraqi resistence. Carry on. You have been successful," he said, as reported by malaysiakini and wire services.

Well first he said President Bush was a war criminal and now he seems to be propagating the increase of US body bags.

Wonder what will the reaction from the Malaysian government, the international community as well as from US be to this?

an addendum:

malaysiakini carried the second part of the interview with Mahathir today where he continues his criticism in the economic mismanagement under Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

The very last question in the interview was mine:

Are you suggesting the government’s economic policy is actually imbalanced or they don’t know what they are doing?

It is up to you to decide, whether they do or not.

Not the answer we were expecting but if your look at the full transcript, that’s what he is saying.

A meeting with Dr Mahathir

Last Friday, a group of us from malaysiakini went to interview former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad at his office at the Perdana Leadership Foundation in Putrajaya.

It was an excellent session. He spoke about the war crimes conference he was organising. Most of the time he also spoke passionately about bringing war criminals to trial (read: Bush and Blair).

Apart from that the old man simply couldn’t stop talking about how Malaysia’s economy was being mismanaged, on how the government was sidelining Proton and Langkawi and the purchases of a new plane and super yacht.

Of course, he also spoke about his health and his new vegetarian diet. He also confirmed that he is now on doctor’s orders to stop eating thosai and chutney as coconut milk is bad for him.

It was a revealing interview and malaysiakini carried the first part today (read here and here). The second part, on local politics, will be published on Wednesday.

Below is a short interchange I had with him during the interview:

We note that there are no government representatives at the conference. Is that done purposely?

We don’t want the government to be involved because this is an NGO effort. Government ministers are bound to speak in support of government’s policies, we don’t want them to be embarrassed by the kind of stand that we take. So it is far better if they don’t get involved.

Is this initiative going against the government? We have (Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi) as the OIC and NAM chairperson (at the same time). In this sort of situation, for us to have this conference in this place, will it be perceived as something to embarrass the government?

No. This government accepts freedom of speech and accepts criticism. It is an open government.

You seriously subscribe to that?

That is what the government claims so the government must be prepared to listen to voices of dissent but if they don’t want, of course they can put a stop to this meeting. You can’t do anything (about that).

What will happen if something - as during your rule - such as Apcet II, the government comes knocking down the door to say you can’t do this (conference)? How would you react to that?

During my time, there were lots of complaints and campaigns against me, even people who stood against me, I didn’t put a stop to that. They campaigned, they said nasty things about me, even in papers, even malaysiakini, you were not very kind to me before, did I close you down? I told you don’t attend my press conference, that’s all.

But you did call us a traitor which we think was quite unwarranted.

That was my feeling at that time. You were saying something that was not fair.

There was also the police raid.

That’s my freedom of speech. As much as you can criticise me, I can criticise you.

p/s: I am not in the by-line in the story, although I wrote it, as mkini policy stipulates editors from not being named.

M stands for...

These came in some of the newsgroups that I receive:

A new acronym - MAHATHIR stands for:

Must Always Hantam Abdullah Till He Is Removed.

Or how about this:

einstein has a creative mind
bill gates has a brilliant mind
mahathir is the mastermind
badawi is... oh never mind!

And how about this juicy retort from the old man when asked at a press conference on Monday about Abdullah’s earlier interview with a Thai newspaper accusing Mahathir of 'smashing the rice bowl' of his son-in-law Khairy Jamaluddin.

Dr Mahathir just said: “It was a very big rice bowl, running in the hundreds of millions. How much rice can you eat?”

When moron meets menace

Ex-premier Mahathir called Soros a 'moron' in 1997 and blamed him for the financial crisis. Soros retorted that Mahathir was a "menace to the country" and subsequently called on him to step down.

Today they met for an hour and Mahathir said:

"Soros said he was not involved in the devaluation of the Malaysian currency and that other people were involved. And I have accepted that."

On his part, Hungarian-born Soros said Mahathir did the right thing in pegging the ringgit in the wake of the financial crisis, which helped stabilise the situation.

Shocked? Surprised? Don’t be! After all money could be the bottom line to this new friendship. In the near future, you might hear news about Soros’ Open Society Initiative sponsoring Mahathir's Perdana Leadership Foundation!

So what else is about to change? Will Mahathir have a change of heart on his decision to sack his deputy in 1998 on moral grounds?

And how about this for a first-class conspiracy theory? Mahathir, Soros and Anwar joining forces to lead a new front to change the world (or maybe they can start with Malaysia).

'Come work with me'

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has always asked Malaysians to work with him in taking the country to greater heights.

But now it has become quite apparent that for work, we should read sleep!

Maybe this is what former premier Mahathir was talking about when he said Abdullah has the habit of falling asleep during meetings.

There are more photos showing our beloved premier stealing a wink at the recently concluded Umno AGM. See them here.

Guess who are they talking about?

Khairy Jamaluddin, Umno Youth deputy chief:

On the fact that Umno faces severe criticisms from BN partners and the opposition on the bumiputera equity issue.

"But we have forgotten the Malays who are questioning the rights of Malays. One such person was once a deputy president of the party."

Khairy said the former deputy president these days was saying that only "the cronies and Umnoputera benefited from the New Economic Policy (NEP)".

Khairy said the very person who questioned the policy was also a beneficiary of the policy."
(from NST, Nov 16, 2006)

p/s: the response from the unnamed person.


Razidah Aziz, Umno Wanita chief:

In her opening speech on how certain individuals like to criticise for the sake of criticising.

"Umno can not let one man's dissatisfaction cause the downfall of its leader and tarnish the party and government.

While every individual had the right to speak and criticise another individual or the government, he or she had no right to make baseless allegations or to slander anyone

If any individual or group insists that only their voice should be heard, this is clearly against the process and concept of democracy which has been practised by the party and country for a very long time."
(from NST, Nov 16, 2006)


Answers: Need I?

As the Future Catches You

As the Future Catches You
(How Genomics and Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth)

Don’t be put off by this long title. This is the book which recuperating ex-premier Dr Mahathir is reading in his bed at the National Heart Institute – now that his family has banned him from reading local newspapers.

So what is this book about? Firstly, it is written by Juan Enriquez. He is the director of the Life Sciences Project at Harvard Business School.

According to reviewers quoted by amazon.com, in the book:

“…with amazing insight and with a graphical, almost poetical syle of writing, Enriquez describes how computers, genomics, and other new technologies are shaping our present and future.”

Another entry said:

“By far the best book I know to help us understand and cope with the powerful technologies that are about to change every aspect of our lives.”

Amazon said:

“You will never look at the world in the same way after reading As the Future Catches You. Juan Enriquez puts you face to face with a series of unprecedented political, ethical, economic, and financial issues, dramatically demonstrating the cascading impact of the genetic, digital, and knowledge revolutions on your life.”

So it is no wonder that the 81-year-old veteran politician/pensioner is reading such a book.

As for the latest on Mahathir, read more here and here.

While you were asleep...

Funny that none of the government or ruling party reps have managed to see ex-premier Dr Mahathir who is recuperating from a mild heart attack.

Yesterday - Day 1 - prime minister Abdullah was quicky shoved into an adjacent room and briefed by a doctor as Mahathir was fast asleep.

According to his son, Mahathir was up all along and went to sleep just about when Abdullah visited.

More insulting was the revelation that Mahathir wanted to get discharged quickly as he did not want to miss a concert by Bollywood heartthrob Shah Rukh Khan. Is it a question of eager to see Shah Rukh Khan but not Abdullah?

So after Round 1 - Abdullah 0, Shah Rukh Khan 1

And then today - Day 2 - opposition leader Lim Kit Siang and his band of three MPs went to visit Mahathir.

They caught the old man in right time as they got to enter his room and have a chat with him. Kit Siang told reporters that the ex-premier was doing just fine and was reading a book.

After that, a steady stream of government and Umno visitors went to see Mahathir - Tengku Razaleigh, Rosmah Mansor (deputy PM Najib’s wife), Ena Ling (Dr Lion Liong Sik’s wife) and two other wives representing the minister’s wives’ association.

Guess what? Mahathir was asleep and this entourage only manage to see Mahathir’s wife Siti Hasmah.

So how do I read this?

After Round 2 - Kit Siang 1 - govt/party visitors 0

Is there something brewing here? Is Mahathir trying to send a message by talking about and receiving selected guests? Or is it just a mere coincidence that he was resting and those who failed to see him had visited at a wrong time?

I truly ponder. In the meantime, I give here a photo of Rosmah looking rather 'disappointed' that she failed to see the ailing Tun.

p/s: True to his lineage as an Indian, Mahathir apparently asked for thosai early this morning.

p/s: pix from malaysiakini (thanks bede).

Backing her father’s vigorous stand

“We need someone to restore our moral bearings, someone who just says outright that these things are wrong, no fudging, no excuses. Someone who understands that these events bring shame to our country, not pride.”

Guess who said this? It’s none other than Marina Mahathir in her latest column in the Star. Who could she be talking about? Don't we know?

In the meantime, her father Dr Mahathir will have to take things slowly now that he has suffered a mild heart attack.

Read more about his stable condition here and here.