When sweeteners are not an election offence

There is no legal provision to prosecute political parties or organisations for giving out money or gifts during an election campaign, according to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).

Deputy chief commissioner (III) Sutinah Sutan said, however, that candidates, agents and supporters can be charged with corruption for similar activities if this is done in the candidate's interests.

RCI: Lebih baik lambat daripada tiada

Oleh Newmond Tibin

Ketua Menteri, NGO dan individu di Sabah
menyambut baik penubuhan suruhanjaya ini.

KOTA KINABALU: Walaupun kerajaan Barisan Nasional (BN) pimpinan Perdana Menteri Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak mempunyai kedudukan selesa kepentingan seluruh rakyat negeri ini berhubung masalah pendatang asing tanpa izin (Pati) yang berlarutan sejak sekian lama, dengan penuh ikhlas, ia menubuhkan sebuah Suruhanjaya Siasatan Diraja (RCI) untuk menangani perkara itu.

Kebanyakan pemimpin negeri, termasuk Ketua Menteri Datuk Seri Musa Aman, pertubuhan bukan kerajaan (NGO) dan individu di Sabah menyambut baik penubuhan suruhanjaya ini, walaupun ada yang berpendapat kerajaan persekutuan sepatutnya berbuat demikian sejak lama dulu.

Mengundi untuk masa hadapan

Oleh Tommy Thomas

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.”            

 - William Shakespeare (“Julius Ceasar”, Act IV iii 215)

Bayangkan Britain ditadbir oleh parti politik yang sama, contohnya, Parti Buruh, selama 55 tahun berturut-turut dari tahun 1957. Ataupun Amerika Syarikat ditadbir oleh Parti Republikan untuk tempoh sama yang berterusan, tanpa henti.

Itulah takdir Malaysia semenjak Merdeka. Pilihan raya umum ke-13, yang mesti diadakan sebelum 28 Jun tahun ini, memberi rakyat Malaysia satu peluang untuk bebas dari monopoli kuasa politik yang dipelopori UMNO, pada asalnya, berlindung di sebalik Perikatan dan setelah itu, sebagai Barisan Nasional.

The same threat of Phillippines swallowing Sabah if...

Joe Fernandez' note

KOTA KINABALU : There's a comment in Malaysia Today that if Sabah opts for freedom, the Philippines is waiting (meaning to swallow Sabah).

This is the same bogeyman story that we were told in 1963 by the Malayan Government and the British: that the Philippines and Indonesia are the big crocodiles in the region, waiting to swallow Sabah and Sarawak after the British leave.

Bishops expose ploy to convert under-aged students to Islam (Part 1)

Written by  Bob Teoh

Islamisation at matriculation college
In Part 1, the Catholic Church in Sabah has exposed a covert ploy to convert under-aged students to Islam in Labuan and complained that non-Muslim students at the Labuan Matriculation College between 17 and 18 years old, “are constantly subjected to various forms of harassment, ridicule and pressure to change their religion.”

What the bishops found out shocked them. Some teachers there were proselytising Christian students resulting in some converting to Islam. The called for full probe after which a strongly worded letter jointly signed by the four Catholic bishops of Sabah together with a report prepared by the Sabah Catholic Diocesan Centre was despatched to the highest levels with copies to Education Minister Muyhiddin Yasin, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister as well as two Sabahan Christian ministers, Bernard Dompok and Dr Maximus Ongkili, as well as to Murphy Pakiam, President of the Bishops’ Conference of Malaysia.

I accuse once again Dr Mahathir for racism in Malayasia

This is the most damning article I have come across on the Mamak-Pseudo Malay’s granting of citizenship to Filipino and Indonesian Muslims in Sabah in 1994 so that they may vote his political party into power.

And what was worse than that criminal act was his utterance that Tunku Abdul Rahman did something even more outrageous in granting citizenship to Chinese, Indians and other non-Malays when Malaya achieved independence from the British in 1957.

I ACCUSE ONCE AGAIN, DR. MAHATHIR MOHAMAD, EX-PRIME MINISTER OF MALAYSIA (1981-2003)!!

by Donplaypuks®,

Once again, I regard it as my duty to pay homage to and keep alive what I regard as the greatest newspaper article of all time -

Bishops expose ploy to convert under-aged students to Islam (Part 1)

Written by  Bob Teoh
The Catholic Church in Sabah has exposed a covert ploy to convert under-aged students to Islam in Labuan.

In a strongly worded letter signed by the four Roman Catholic bishops of Sabah, they complained that non-Muslim students at the Labuan Matriculation College between 17 and 18 years old, "are constantly subjected to various forms of harassment, ridicule and pressure to change their religion."

The residential college is under the matriculation division of the Ministry of Education and has an enrolment of 2,771 students from Sarawak, Sabah and Labuan. About half of them are Catholics and Protestants and the rest made up of Muslims other than 77 of them who are Buddhists.

Joe Fernandez on how to topple BN

KOTA KINABALU : PBS won only 25 seats in 1994 because the other seats were packed with illegal immigrants.

There's no need to issue a directive to issue citizenships only within the law. It's understood.
The Opposition will not accept a BN victory at the 13th GE for four reasons:

(1) the BN has been in power too long, an unprecedented 56 years;

(2) The BN has been in power all these years through fair and foul means;
(3) the BN would have cheated to win the 13th General Election; and

(4) if the BN is not toppled by a Revolution as in Egypt, it will never be toppled.

Sabah and Sarawak must decide what to do if there's a Revolution in KL and Putrajaya.

Egypt -- the evil of Government

Joe Fernandez' observation
KOTA KINABALU : In Egypt, Mubarak used to win every presidential election, collecting 90 per cent of the votes cast.

Finally, the people of Egypt were convinced that there was no way that they could bring down the Mubarak Government through elections.

They took to the streets and created the Egyptian Revolution.

The moral of the story is that no political party can legitimately win more than two or three terms consecutively. Government by its very nature is evil but probably a necessary evil as long as it doesn't get too big for its boots.

Sabah, Sarawak at historical crossroads come the 13th GE

By Joe Fernandez
The unprecedented political divide in Malaya with the emergence of Pakatan Rakyat (PR) taking half the 165 Malayan seats in Parliament and five states (now four) and Kuala Lumpur on Sat 8 Mar, 2008 opened up a historical window of opportunity for Sabah and Sarawak to free themselves from the 50-year-long vice-like grip of the Malaya-dominated Federal Government in Putrajaya.

In 2008, voters in Malaya voted against the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) -- and not so much for PR -- and hence, it's said, the Opposition Alliance won by default. PR turned in a miserable performance in 2004 at the 12th General Election.