Pakatan's march to Putrajaya paved with obstacles

By M Krishnamoorthy

The road to Putrajaya for Pakatan Rakyat, if it wins the general election, is paved with obstacles - rough and rugged terrain - as Malaysia’s prime minister ponders deeply over some strategies to “defend” Putrajaya.

This was clear after a crucial question went unanswered last week, when Prime Minister Najib Razak officially visited the Royal Selangor Club.

In a speech to the club’s members and others, Najib (left) touched their hearts on some nostalgic and historical anecdotes about his association with the club as a youth when he followed his father, Tun Abdul Razak, on a visit to the club.

MoCS is back, to launch anti-corruption crusade

After a six-month hiatus, the Movement for Change, Sarawak (MoCS) will resume its work in Sarawak come Feb 13.

“We will continue where we left off. The Red Rally last August 13 was the final event of our one-year campaign to oust Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud. While MoCS conceded defeat to Taib, we never lose sight of ‘Ops Taibetes’. We merely took a break,” the movement’s leader, Francis Paul Siah, said in a statement today.

Family has two more S’pore suites, claims PKR

PETALING JAYA: Following allegations that the family of Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil owns condominium units in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, the PKR has further claimed the family has two more luxury suites in the republic.

PKR strategic director Rafizi Ramli said the two other units in Singapore's Marina Bay, with a price tag of $S14.29mil (or RM34.6mil), were bought on May 27, 2010.

He alleged the Marina Bay suites were bought under the names of National Feedlot Corporation chairman Datuk Dr Mohamed Salleh Ismail and NFC chief executive officer Wan Shahinur Izran Salleh.

EPISODE 1: How East Malaysia and Terengganu were robbed of their wealth

In 1973, Barisan Nasional was launched and PAS became part of the federal government. In 1974, the new ruling coalition in Parliament (where all the opposition parties except DAP were now members of) passed the Petroleum Development Act and the oil and gas were transferred from the states to the federal government, meaning Petronas.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Give or take, give and take, they are both four letter words, just as Umno is (pun intended). Nevertheless, we can expect Umno to be confused about when to use the word ‘give’ and when to use ‘take’. However, Pakatan Rakyat too?

As Julius Caesar said, “Et tu Brute?”

EPISODE 2: The murder of a whistleblower

The last photograph of Dato' Patrick Wong
just months before he was murdered.

The doctor’s report says that the cause of Dato’ Patrick’s death was a ‘blunt force trauma to the head with compression of the neck’. That was what the medical report says. My Deep Throats told me that Dato’ Patrick was strangled and then THROWN off the balcony. The police say he accidentally fell while trying to escape. How do they then account for the ‘compression of the neck’ (meaning strangled) if he accidentally fell from the balcony and was not murdered?

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

This whole episode started in October 2009. Dato’ Patrick Wong and his wife were on a short visit to the UK to do a tour of England and Scotland. They spent some time with my wife and me where we managed to talk quite a bit about the state of affairs in Malaysia and how matters in Selangor are certainly a cause for concern.

Najib running out of money? RM1.5bil taken from EPF to fund Nong Chik's housing scheme

By Maclean Patrick, Malaysia Chronicle

At a time when other governments are looking into austerity programs to cushion themselves from a global recession, Malaysia is spending its retirement fund on ill-guided projects. And when a government of the day - the UMNO-BN - unceremoniously plays around with money its citizens have toiled hard for and set apart for their retirement needs, one thing is clear - nothing is safe anymore.

The nonsense about "winnable candidate"

By Raymond Tombung

Tun Musa Hitam had just shown his amusement and low opinion about this new popular terminology called “winnable candidates.” He said that it is not up to the leaders to decide but up to the people! And how true!

Personally, I have wondered how to determine if a candidate is “winnable” or not. Anyway, I am also not comfortable with the word “winnable” in this context because “winnable” actually means “can be won”. But what they mean is “able to win” (boleh menang) a phrase which has no single word to express in the English language. So we are stuck with the awkward “winnable”.

Kuamut surrendered bundles of NCR evidences to STAR

By Ezra Haganez

LUYANG: The Kuamut State Reform Party (STAR) committee recently handed over to state STAR bundles of evidences of Native Customary Rights (NCR) lands of the Tambanuo community within Kuamut and Sukau constituencies in Kinabatangan area.

A local Tambanuo leader, James Ait, who is also STAR Sabah chapter state committee member presented the documents to STAR Sabah chapter chairman, Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan at his office in Damai, Luyang.

Islam, the Quran and Mohamad

By Joe Darlington

The singular contribution of Islam to the concept of religion or theology is that it killed the idea of God, if he did exist, continuing to send down prophets to Earth to guide mankind.

Islam, in its first recitation in the Quran, clearly states (like Buddhism) that there is no God but the religion holds that if a God did exist, then he would have certain attributes. The religion refers to the 1001 known attributes of God and this figure is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the various names by which God is called.

2 Tough Questions

Question 1:
If you knew a woman who was pregnant,
Who had 8 kids already,
Three who were deaf,
Two who were blind,
One mentally retarded,
And she had syphilis,
Would you recommend that she have an
abortion?

Read the next question before looking at
the response for this one.

Question 2:
It is time to elect a new world leader,
and only your vote counts..
Here are the facts about the three
candidates.

Candidate A:
Associates with crooked politicians, and
consults with astrologists.
He's had two mistresses.
He also chain smokes
And drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.

Candidate B:
He was kicked out of office twice,
Sleeps until noon,
Used opium in college
And drinks a quart of whiskey every
evening.

Candidate C:
He is a decorated war hero.
He's a vegetarian,
Doesn't smoke,
Drinks an occasional beer
And never committed adultery.

Which of these candidates would be our
choice?

Decide first ... No peeking, and then
scroll down for the response.