Should Malaysians vote for the racist ?

Zulkifli Nordin - PERKASA

condemns Chinese and Indians as "pendatang haram". Where are his roots ? Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi or from heaven ? Dare he traces his roots ! After all he is also a "pendatang haram ?





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Malaysian election time: swinging change towards transformation?

The political choice for Malaysians is not whether to embrace change, but which kind of change they prefer.

IN life, change is said to be the only constant. In politics change is a given, even mandatory.

If a governing system does not change its style or policies the way people want, then the system itself may be changed. Such change may be democratic or autocratic, evolutionary or revolutionary, peaceful or violent.

Much will depend on the type and degree of change. Who will be affected by that change, and in what ways?

Will the promised changes be what people had been led to expect? What other changes are likely as a consequence?

Will the pros outweigh the cons of those changes? And if the people find the actual changes not to their liking, will those changes be reversible?

Such questions often arise at general elections. Malaysia’s coming 13th general election seems to have unearthed more of these questions than any other election in the country’s history.

This comes partly as a residue of the 2008 general election. In that “political tsunami”, more seats in the Federal Parliament changed over into Opposition hands than ever before.

At the time, many voters who opted for the Opposition had not actually wanted to change the Federal Government. They merely wanted to teach Barisan Nasional a lesson for non-delivery and general indifference since 2004.

Voters did so by clearly denying Barisan its two-thirds majority. This had come right after the 2004 general election, which had won Barisan 63.9% of the popular vote (more, if Barisan had contested all constituencies).

So in 2008, Barisan scored only 50.3%, an all-time low. The previous low count was in 1999, which saw Barisan win only 56.5% of the popular vote.

Will the general election this year see a swing of support back to Barisan as it hopes, or a further boost for the Opposition as it imagines? Will there be a pendulum effect in favour of Barisan, or a slide favouring Pakatan Rakyat?

As soon as Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak assumed the premiership in April 2009, he had seen the writing on the wall.

He opted for a major overhaul of policy and mindsets with the emphasis on transformation (change).

This spanned an Economic Transformation Programme that aimed for merit over entitlement, the Performance and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) within the Prime Minister’s Department introducing Key Performance Indicators, a change in national attitudes with 1Malaysia, focused aspirations towards a high-income nation and even abolition of repressive laws like the ISA.

The changes came thick and fast, including some that none had thought possible. The pace of changes exceeded anything that any Federal or State Government had seen before.

Even a movement like Hindraf, born in the crucible of street protests and energised by hunger strikes, came to deal with Najib’s Barisan.

Hindraf leaders P. Waythamoorthy and N. Ganesan had discussed their concerns and bargained with Pakatan and Barisan leaders, and opted to work with Najib.

Najib himself, coming into office in his mid-50s and the son of a former prime minister, personified change. One after another, Barisan stalwarts like Tun Dr Ling Liong Sik, Datuk Seri Samy Vellu and Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz quit the scene, following Tun Dr Mahathir’s lead.

Unlike this older generation, Najib engaged openly and repeatedly with the younger generation. Young adults are typically seen as energetic, idealistic and hungry for change.

The obvious subtext was that voters need not opt for a change in government, since the government itself had already launched a comprehensive programme of change. This approach seemed to coincide with the mood of the time.

The 13th general election will see 2.9 million new voters, out of a grand total of 13.1 million nationwide. That represents just over 22% of the country’s electorate.

Some of those new, mostly younger voters may not seek that much change. Many will want more of the changes they have seen, sticking with Barisan, while others may still want a change in the system itself by opting for Pakatan.

A divided Hindraf embodies this difference in approach. In seeking change, should one ride the wave of change in securing more changes, or switch to a competing outfit atop a platform of change?

Which is more important, adding to the momentum of change that had already begun, or opting for the promise of change? Each individual and group will have to make that crucial choice come next Sunday.

On nomination day, Barisan unveiled another surprise: the high proportion of fresh young candidates. In states like Penang, the percentage of new faces reached 70%.

In contrast, Pakatan parties are still led mostly by older people: Lim Kit Siang, Karpal Singh, Nik Aziz and Hadi Awang, with Anwar himself six years older than Najib.

Will the many young voters, seeking change, end up voting for the oldest political leaders in the country?

COMMENT
By BUNN NAGARA

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DAP's Tiger roars, Malaysian election fevers!

DAP national chairman Karpal Singh, the ‘Tiger of Jelutong’, is now roaring his way into the people’s hearts this general election.

For the first time, he has incorporated his famous tiger trademark into his election campaign by having his campaign vehicles emblazoned with his image beside the image of a tiger.

The 72-year-old lawyer, who earned the nickname following a dispute with former MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu in Parlia-ment in 1982, said he was sure the tiger would bring good luck to him and Pakatan Rakyat.

He also did not mind retelling the story behind the nickname to reporters during a meeting-the- people session at the market in Jalan Gangsa yesterday.



“During an argument with Samy Vellu, he called himself a lion while he called me a tiger.

“But I’m a lion as Singh means lion in Punjabi. And lion is ‘singa’ in Bahasa Malaysia,” he added.

“But then I said to him: ‘Never mind, you be the lion and I’ll be the tiger. There are no lions in the country.

“So the name started from there,” he said with a chuckle.

Karpal Singh, who is defending his Bukit Gelugor parliamentary seat, said a supporter, S. Mahendran, had taken the campaign vehicles — a multi-purpose vehicle and a jeep — to the shop to have the images pasted on them.

He added that he would ensure that tigers, an endangered species, would be protected as any attack on a tiger was an attack on him.

“The vehicles bearing the tiger images received a positive response from the public who would take photographs of them,” he said.

He has also called himself the ‘Tiger General’ in Bukit Gelugor which he said was the only constituency in the country to have four lawyers in the parliamentary and state seats.

“Four lawyers — we are like ge-nerals. And I am the ‘Tiger General’,” he said.

DAP candidates for the three state seats are incumbents R.S.N. Rayer (Seri Delima), Wong Hon Wai (Air Itam) and Yeoh Soon Hin (Paya Terubong).

Karpal Singh won the Jelutong parliamentary seat in 1978 and held the seat for more than 20 years until losing it in 1999.

The Bukit Gelugor constituency was once part of the Jelutong parliamentary constituency until the mid-1990s.

By JOSEPHINE JALLEH josephine@thestar.com.my

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The powerful political marketing: hate and love emotions in Malaysian election?

The peddling of hate has been proven to be very effective in political marketing, especially when people are trapped in certain mindsets that determine their views.

SATURDAY, April 20, was a special day for about 80 of my ex-schoolmates and I, most of whom have known each other since starting out in primary school 51 years ago.

No, politics had nothing to do it. Nomination Day just happened to fall on our old boys’ reunion, planned months earlier.

But there was no relief from the pervasive political talk amidst the camaraderie and merriment.

Even the chef at the golf resort in Malacca where the gathering of the 58-year-olds were held, could not resist trying to campaign for the side he was supporting.

To my disbelief, the man who had only recently returned home after working in Germany for many years asked me point blank: “Who are you voting for, ah?”

With the whole country gripped by election fever and emotions running at all time highs, such manners can be expected before we cast our ballots for the mother of all political battles on May 5.

A day after the bash, as we were recovering from the after effects of the revelry, a friend who has seen the ups and downs of business shared his experiences in the insurance and multi-level marketing industries before heading back home.

Recalling his lucrative days of running a thriving insurance agency, he said the art of selling policies mostly relied on playing on the emotions of potential clients.

His formula was simple: Give 98% focus on emotions, 1% on product knowledge and 1% for other needed explanations to convince, including “convenient untruths”.

We soon ended up comparing the similarities of tactics used in the realm of politics.

An election, after all, is the final closing move in the marketing of political emotions to sway voters to one side or the other.

Emotions are mental reactions experienced as strong feelings directed toward a specific object, persons or situations.

The word can be traced to its Latin roots of movere (to move). Emotions move people to act in a certain way.

Like in the case of marketing products or services, three types of appeals – logical, ethical and emotional – are put across to political “customers”.

By right, the logical route based on reasoning should be the most appealing but is used the least, except in cases of party manifestos and presentation of performance “report cards”.

The simple reason for this is people don’t make rational decisions based on detailed information, careful analysis or conscious thought.

The ethical appeal is usually used in campaign messages to raise the profile of certain personalities and expose the unsuitability of others by disparaging them.

In business, the emotional appeal involves using greed, fear, envy, pride and shame, but in politics, it is the harnessing of primary emotions – happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust and fear, in addition to the most potent one, hate.

The peddling of hate has been proven to be very effective in political marketing, especially when people are trapped in certain mindsets that determine their views and decision-making.

In Malaysia, like elsewhere, political support is conditioned by up­bringing based on ethnicity, location (urban or rural), level of education or wealth and the shared belief of family members or friends.

Tragically, since the last general election, hate has been stoked steadily to the point where reason has little chance or participation in civil discourse.

Hate has become the norm in our political engagement, especially in cyber space, with our Hollywood icon Datuk Seri Michelle Yeoh as the latest hapless victim.

The 49-year-old actress was called “a traitor” to the Chinese race, running dog and pinned with other unpalatable labels by partisan cyber bullies just for attending a dinner in Port Klang organised by a group of Selangor Chinese businessmen in support of Barisan Nasional last week.





Two months ago, a young female Facebook user, who posted a YouTube video pledging support for one side, ended up being insulted with all sorts of derogatory names and even threatened with rape.

Don’t Malaysians have a choice or the right to support whoever they want anymore?

These days, one cannot log into Facebook without being drawn into some form of partisan political conversation.

Too much energy appears to be focused on emotionally-charged rants and sharing them with people who might not necessarily agree.

Instead of “de-friending” these people, I have taken to hiding posts that are deemed to be unworthy of sharing.

I read somewhere that this would automatically prompt Facebook to weed out posts from such people. It has not happened yet, though.

Hate is also being spread via e-mail and through SMSes and WhatsApp on mobile phones.

Like many others, I have been getting an endless stream of political messages designed to influence my vote, over the past month.

Enough already, please. In any case, my mind has already been made up. It was done some time ago, too.

> Associate Editor M. Veera Pandiyan values these words by Gautama Buddha: Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule

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Japan glorifies war criminals in annual visits toYasukuni Shrine!

Japan's frictions between neighbors have resurfaced after a group of 168 Japanese lawmakers on Tuesday paid their respects at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which glorifies war-dead including those guilty of atrocities. It was the first time in eight years that a group of over 100 Japanese politicians visited the shrine. On the same day, a fleet of Chinese marine surveillance vessels drove Japanese boats out of waters surrounding the Diaoyu Islands, thwarting the provocative attempts of around 80 Japanese right wingers.

The South Korean government has issued a strongly worded complaint over the Japanese politicians' visit to the shrine. China and South Korea have shown their shared outrage over the Yasukuni Shrine issue, but Japan seems to have disregarded this.

There are not many extreme right wingers in Japan, but Japanese society has still been tilting further toward right-wing views.

These days, provocations have been coming from Japan's deputy prime minister, a group of over 100 lawmakers and the right wingers creating waves over the Diaoyu Islands issue.

The Chinese government is taking the lead in dealing with Japan. However, it has little leverage when dealing with various forces within Japan. This reality cannot be changed in the near future. This means the Chinese government's stance has to be tough. Chinese marine surveillance vessels have done a pretty good job on this occasion. Since the Diaoyu crisis broke out last year, the tough resistance of the Chinese government against Japan has made it the main force in safeguarding the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands.

The latest situation involving the Diaoyu Islands has demonstrated the contrast in terms of strength between China and Japan as well as the changing East Asia strategic arena.

The Yasukuni Shrine visits are evidence of Japan's reluctance to accept reality. Japanese society is becoming increasingly radical, but continues to take a careful approach in maritime conflicts with China.

Japan lacks a clear strategy in East Asia. Encountering China's rise, it hasn't formed a policy that helps it maximize its interests, and instead shows resentment and anxiety. Its alliance with the US cannot help it solve its own strategic dilemma.

The gradual decline in Japan's power is the reason for its lack of confidence.

Japan is like a marijuana smoker, who enjoys the excitement of the moment but is ultimately damaging itself at the same time. Japan will fall by itself. China doesn't need to launch fierce counterattacks. Instead, it can just express its firm stance to make Japan feel scared. 

China needs to create diplomatic leverage over Japan, which could help it express its determination when dealing with issues related to sovereignty and historical matters, and bring the Sino-Japanese conflict under control. - Global Times

Japan shrine visit angers South Korea

Taro Aso, Japan's deputy prime minister and finance minister, bows at the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo. Photograph: AFP/Getty

South Korea has abruptly cancelled a trip to Tokyo by its foreign minister in protest at visits to a controversial war shrine over the weekend by Japanese cabinet ministers, including the deputy prime minister.

Visits to the Yasukuni shrine – which honours 14 class-A war criminals among 2.5 million other Japanese war dead – have traditionally angered China and South Korea, which view the site as a symbol of Japanese militarism.

Four ministers in the conservative administration of Shinzo Abe paid visits to the shrine, including his finance minister, Taro Aso.

The separate visits, to mark the beginning of the shrine's annual spring festival, come amid tensions with China over a longstanding territorial dispute in the East China sea.

Beijing did not immediately respond but South Korea said on Monday that its foreign minister, Yun Byung-se, would not be making a two-day visit to Tokyo due to begin this Friday.

"Amid this kind of atmosphere our stance is that it will be difficult to hold a productive discussion and Yun decided not to visit to Japan this time," an unnamed South Korean official told the Yonhap news agency.

Abe did not visit the shrine but sent a decorative branch of a cypress tree as a ritual offering, with his name and title written beneath, according to media reports.

China is unlikely to overlook the visit while the two rivals continue to stake rival claims to the Senkaku islands, known as the Diaoyu in China.

For many in China and South Korea, visits to Yasukuni in central Tokyo are proof that Japan's modern leaders have yet to atone for their country's military misadventures on the Asian mainland in the first half of the 20th century.

Despite his nationalist leanings Abe did not visit during his previous year-long premiership from 2006 to avoid inflaming opinion in Beijing and Seoul.

He later said he regretted the decision and with his popularity ratings high at home speculation is mounting that he may be less willing to consider sensibilities in China and South Korea, particularly if his party wins key upper house elections in July, giving it control of both Diet chambers.

Aso, who also serves as deputy prime minister, has a reputation for angering Japan's neighbours; in 2003, he praised the country's 1910-1945 colonisation of the Korean peninsula and has refused to apologise for his family firm's past use of Korean forced labourers and allied prisoners of war.

Aso, a former prime minister, wants class-A war criminals "delisted" from Yasukuni, thereby removing the biggest obstacle to members of the imperial family resuming their annual visits.

On Sunday, he bowed in the Shinto shrine's worship hall and left without speaking to reporters.

The other visitors included Keiji Furuya, a state minister in charge of resolving the abduction of Japanese nationals by North Korea during the cold war. "It is natural for a lawmaker to offer heartfelt condolences for spirits of the war dead who sacrificed their lives for the nation," he said.

Abe visited the shrine in 2012 while leader of the then main opposition Liberal Democratic party, drawing criticism from China.

In late March, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the objections over Yasukuni centred on a desire for Japan to "face up to and reflect on its history of aggression and respect the feelings of people from the victimised countries, including China". -

Sources:

Right candidates for the picking in Malaysian election fights

Fine, young candidates for the picking -They may be greenhorns in this general election but two winsome contenders have caught our aunty’s interest with their winning ways.

BY now, we know it’s a very crowded field of GE13 candidates. But in the end, what really matters to me is who is vying for my vote in my kawasan.

So I checked the list and from the lot, two first-timers, both women, piqued my interest.

First off is Chew Hoong Ling, who is pitted against Tony Pua, the incumbent in the Petaling Jaya Utara parliamentary seat.

Chew shot to fame when she donated part of her liver to a stranger, a 13-year-old girl suffering from liver cancer, four years ago.

Chew’s amazingly selfless act earned her much admiration. That much I knew about her but little else.

So when her candidacy in my constituency was announced, I decided to find out more.

I couldn’t quite remember what she looked like so I checked out her pictures online.

At 33, she is young and quite tele­genic – important since the world is full of phone cameras.

According to news reports, Chew was born in Kuala Lumpur and she holds a BSc (Hons) degree in information systems from a UK university.

From her blog, I further learned she is a professional emcee and social entrepreneur.

She also describes herself as a property investor, author, radio deejay and former RTM1 presenter.

So she has the gift of the gab, a talent an effective politician should have. Not only that, she is fluent in English, Malay and Mandarin.

But what will she talk about? More importantly, will she talk sense?

Again, I am encouraged by her range of interests that seems rooted in genuine passion. Her support for organ donation, for example, started when she was a teenager.

She is also interested in single mothers because she met such people while helping out at her mother’s reflexology centre.

She wants to promote skills training for school leavers because she saw how her cousins struggled to find work after they dropped out.

She also appears to be a good neighbour and serves as the secretary of the Section 21, Petaling Jaya Rukun Tetangga.

If these are her causes, I will therefore expect her to speak knowledgeably on them. I hope she will focus on what she believes are important for us in her constituency and for the rest of the country. I want to see if she can convince me she will fight for those beliefs in Parliament.

What intrigues me is Chew is a BN candidate but she also took part in Bersih 3.0 because she says she believes in free and fair elections.

Do I detect a streak of independence in this feisty young woman? That would be something I appre­ciate in my MP.

Next is Yeo Bee Yin, the DAP candidate for the Kampung Tunku state assembly seat. She’s 30 and from Segamat, Johor.

This young lady has impressive academic credentials. As she tells it in her blog, after her secondary school education (SMJK Seg Hwa), she studied Chemical Engineering in Universiti Teknologi Petronas under a Petronas scholarship.

She topped her class, graduating with first class honours in 2006.

Yeo got a job with an international oil and gas company which sent her to work as a field engineer in Turkmenistan.

She made such good money that she was able to pay off her Petronas 10-year bond in just a few months.

But it was a six-month internship in Germany when she was still an undergraduate that started her political awakening.

“Before coming to Germany, as a top student, I thought I knew a lot. After I came here, I realised how little I knew about the world. I began to question why in Malaysia … we (have not) been taught to think critically and objectively,” she writes.

But, caught up with her high-paying job, she says, “Life was great, I worked hard, played hard ... I became terribly self-centred”.

Then came March 8, 2008, and “when I opened The Star Online and saw the news on the political tsunami, I realised how I still loved and cared about my country.”

That was the moment she decided she wanted to contribute and not view her country as an outsider.

Still, coming home had to wait as she had won a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to do her Masters in Advanced Chemical Engineering at Cambridge University – a life-long dream.

At 29, she returned home to take up politics, much to her mother’s dismay. And what does she want to achieve?

“I hope that … Malaysia can be a land of opportunities and equality for our children … a land where, no matter how big and what your dreams are, they can be fulfilled here.”

She also says she is passionate about issues related to the environment and sustainability, young people, women and family.

So now I have before me two fine young women from opposing sides who are after my vote.

I like that. I like the fact that there are strong, intelligent, highly educated and motivated young people who are entering politics because they are passionate about their country. I like it because with such candidates, it means we voters have real choices to make this GE13.

So Aunty, So What? By JUNE H.L.WONG

It’s ceramah time! The writer plans to attend as many as possible with her first-time voter daughters and hopes the weather will cooperate. Feedback welcome: email junewong@thestar.com.my

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I am the most winnable candidate in Malaysian election

PETALING JAYA: Sacked DAP leader Jenice Lee who is defending her Teratai state seat as an Independent claimed that she is the most “winnable” candidate in the contest.

Despite going up against four others as well as one DAP comrade, she claimed that the support from those who showed up to cheer her on during Nomination Day was a lot more than the DAP candidate.

“Show me which DAP branch here does not support me. All of them proposed my name for candidacy to the party. This only shows that the leadership refuses to listen to the grassroots,” she said in an emotionally-charged interview on Switchup.tv's GE13: The Showdown with journalist Regina Lee.

She said that she was not sorry about contesting as an Independent, citing a conspiracy and tales of sabotage by her own party.

Hitting out at “certain quarters” which included a top party leader, Lee claimed that her popularity triggered the “conspiracy” to sideline her.

She also claimed that her party members made all sorts of allegations against her.

Fighting spirit: Lee (right) answering a question during the interview at Menara Star in Petaling Jaya.
 

“They claimed that I abused funds and even resorted to personal attacks, claiming that I was having affairs with many men,” she said.

If the party was serious about investigating those allegations, she said they should have acted when the rumours surfaced in 2011.

She also claimed that she was sidelined due to “jealousy”.

“In the Selangor party elections in 2010, I received the highest number of votes and I'm one of the most popular faces in the party,” she said.

Despite her “popularity”, she lost in the race for the Selangor DAP Socialist Youth chief post to her former assistant last year.

Despite the claims of sabotage, she said she would attempt to rejoin the DAP if she wins the elections and even if she does not, she considers herself to be Pakatan Rakyat-friendly.

“My heart and soul is still with DAP and it is a good party, but there is just this small group of leaders practising cronyism.

“I think I have what it takes to fix this,” she said.

 - The Star/Asia News Network

China, U.S. trade barbs on human rights

Americans do not enjoy a genuinely equal right to vote

China slammed the human rights record of the United States in response to Washington's report on rights around the world, saying that U.S. military operations have infringed on rights abroad and that political donations at home have thwarted the country's democracy.

The report released Sunday in China — which defines human rights primarily in terms of improving living conditions for its 1.3 billion people- also cited gun violence in the U.S. among its examples of human rights violations, saying it was a serious threat to the lives and safety of America's citizens.

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2012 said the U.S. government continues to strengthen the monitoring of its people and that political donations to election campaigns have undue influence on U.S. policy.

"American citizens do not enjoy a genuinely equal right to vote," the report said, citing a decreased turnout in the 2012 presidential election and a voting rate of 57.5 percent.

The report from the information office of the State Council, or China's Cabinet, which mostly cited media reports, said there was serious sex, racial and religious discrimination in the U.S. and that the country had seriously infringed on the human rights of other nations through its military operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

The U.S.'s annual global human rights report issued Friday by the State Department said China had imposed new registration requirements to prevent groups from emerging that might challenge government authority. It said Chinese government efforts to silence and intimidate political activists and public interest lawyers continued to increase, and that authorities use extralegal measures such as enforced disappearance to prevent the public voicing of independent opinions.

It also said there was discrimination against women, minorities and people with disabilities, and people trafficking, the use of forced labor, forced sterilization and widespread corruption.

China's government maintains strict controls over free speech, religion and political activity — restrictions that the U.S. considers human rights violations.- AP