Bersih denies it’s anti-govt, it wants free and fair elections

Teoh El Sen

PETALING JAYA: A Bersih 2.0 leader today sought to correct a misconception that the movement is anti-government.

“If the government stands for free and fair elections, then we are not anti-government,” said Haris Ibrahim, who sits on the steering committee of Bersih 2.0.

“But if the government is going to stand in the way of free and fair elections, we are against anyone who is against free and fair elections.”

He made his remarks in an interview on FMT RAW, a half-hour online broadcast that made its debut at 3pm today.

Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin recently accused Bersih of having a “dirty political agenda” in its plan to rally Malaysians for a “Walk for Democracy” on July 9.

In the interview with FMT reporter Stephanie Sta Maria, Haris said the conduct of the recent Sarawak election underlined the need for electoral reform in Malaysia. Watch Video

He added that a post-mortem showed that “it was corruption upon corruption upon corruption”.

Elaborating on Bersih’s purpose, he said: “We are just acting against anyone acting against the interest of the rakyat. We have eight simple demands. I think they are all legitimate demands.

“If the government is going to wake up to the need to clean up, and effect these reforms, why would anyone be against the government?

“We say again and again, Bersih is not pro-Pakatan Rakyat. Neither are we anti-Barisan Nasional. We are pro-reform.”

He said Bersih sent invitations to both sides of the political divide, but “it’s not our fault if BN chooses to stay away”.

Pre-emptive arrests

He renewed his invitation to all parties to participate in the rally. “Join us,” he said.

Referring to plans by Perkasa and Umno Youth to hold their own rallies, Haris said he respected their “right to peacefully assemble and I hope they respect ours”.

However, he accused the two organisations of attempting to taint Bersih’s objectives with their racial rhetoric.

“Every time they get involved in something like this, they bring in the race issues.”

But he added: “Malaysians are more mature, and are not so easily swayed by race rethoric, thank God.”

On the possibility of police action against the rally, Haris said Bersih was hoping that the police would realise that their function was to facilitate.

“Article 10 of the Federal Constitution guarantees the rakyat the right to peacefully assemble,” he said. It supersedes the Police Act, which was enacted by Parliament.

“Yes we don’t have a permit and we never intended to and we don’t expect to get one.”

He speculated that pre-emptive arrests, as the Home Minister has threatened, would further spur people to participate in the rally.

He expected more than 150,000, which would be more than twice the number in the first Bersih rally in 2007, when police attacked participants with teargas and water cannons.

“If you want to arrest us, take the whole bunch of us,” he said. “This has become bigger than the committee. This is a movement that belongs to the rakyat who want to take part in this call.”

In ending the interview, he urged all citizens to participate and to wear the colour yellow, which he called “the new black”, the “bad colour”.

“Come on, it’s just yellow, for God’s sake. Don’t be afraid, claim your space. Do not allow the authorities to bully you.”

Tambatuon folk fear Bakun fate

Michael Kaung

Suhakam hears why the villagers don’t want a dam in their midst.

PENAMPANG: The villagers of Tambatuon are anxious to avoid the heartbreak that the people of Bakun suffer, according to testimony before Suhakam commissioners who are conducting a study on Native Customary Land Rights (NCR) issues.

Jahim Singkui, who heads the Tambatuon Villagers’ Action Committee, told the commissioners today that the government had ignored pleas against its plan to build a RM450 million dam in the village, which is in the Kota Belud district.

The project would submerge ancestral lands, he said.

Jahim, the son of a former village head of Kampung Tambatuon, said he went to Sarawak to talk to the people forced out of their lands to make way for the Bakun Dam.

All he heard from them were tales of disappointment, he said. “They have been short changed by the government.”

He said the Tambatuon villagers were not interested in any offer of compensation because they did not want to end up heartbroken and bitter like the Bakun folk.

Furthermore, he added, the government had disappointed them before.  Some years ago, he explained, the villagers asked for assistance to implement an irrigation scheme so that they could harvest paddy twice year. They also asked for a road to connect their orchards to a main road. These requests were ignored, he said.

“Now we are looking after ourselves without any help. All of us, about 900 people, are very comfortable in our own land. We have about 300 acres of paddy fields, nearly 1,000 acres of rubber and about 50 acres of fruit.

“We are opposing the dam because Tambatuon is the only village we have lived in for the past 14 generations.”

Suhakam began its inquiry in Sabah on June 17. It will have sessions in different districts of the state until July 15 before moving on to Sarawak and the peninsula.

Villagers not consulted

Jahim recounted to the commission the how the villagers learnt about the Tambatuon dam project two years ago.

He said a few people went to the village claiming to be tourists interested in research about the area.

“We found out these individuals were lying when we read in the newspapers that they were appointed by the government to carry out a study in our village about the proposed dam,” he said.

“Since then, we have not allowed any outsider to come to our village to do any research for this particular project.”

Jahim said there had been no effort to consult the villagers about the project.

“We are very upset with the statement of certain leaders who only use the media to explain the project to Sabahans in a language that none of the people from the village can understand.

“Why don’t they come to our village and explain it to us?”

He said some government leaders, including Deputy Chief Minister Yahya Hussin, finally visited the village last June 10, but did nothing to engage with the residents.

“They came just for a little while, feeding fish in our river and taking pictures. And then they left. But we managed to hand over a memorandum opposing the project. There has been no response.”

Book TV

My reading last month at the Museum of American Finance in New York will be aired on C-SPAN's Book TV this Sunday, June 26, at 11 AM and 8 PM EDT. Click here for more information.

The Hellscape

Yesterday I did a bad thing and a good thing. The bad thing I did was to withdraw the money from my defined contribution plan that covered the last three years I worked part-time in Georgia. No, it wasn't that much money, but the advice my husband had given me was to roll it over into an IRA. Instead, I withdrew the money, deposited most of it in a newly-opened savings account and some of it in a newly-opened checking account in a bank near my new home. Then I went shopping. 

I really don't like to shop, especially in the kind of shopping centers that plaster the area where I have moved and that plaster most of America's cities and suburban areas, what my husband calls "The Hellscape," acres of parking lot in front of big-box buildings. 

What I loved about the place from which we moved is that the local community (one of the densest populated in Georgia) had made a conscious effort to recreate a real downtown, with businesses lined up along sidewalks and parking available in designated areas behind businesses or in parking garages.  Trees lined the streets. Tables were set out in front of restaurants.  An art gallery was located next to an import shop which was located next to a coffee shop where local kids read their poetry on Friday nights. Several good restaurants were within walking distance of my house, a mile from downtown. I could walk the shady sidewalks of my neighborhood and within fifteen minutes arrive at a bookstore or at my hairdresser's or at a restaurant where I could order an excellent margarita.

Not so in The Hellscape. You are damned to arrive only by car--everyone in his or her own car, all the cars stacked up at the three-eyed (or four-eyed if there's a left-turn lane) traffic light that guards the way into The Hellscape. And once you've arrived, and parked, and walked the steaming hot pavement (for this IS south Louisiana) to the somewhat shady portico of the building you're headed for, there are few surprises left to anticipate. All the stores are all the stores you will find in any other Hellscape, and the products sold are products you would find in any other Hellscape store. Maybe you'll find something on sale. 

To shop, I drove to a larger Hellscape from a smaller, labyrinthine Hellscape. The labyrinth had been designed, evidently, to test the orienting skills of the newly-damned. I failed--even with a printed Google map and a satellite photo of the shopping center where the Louisiana Division of Motor Vehicles was located. I had to make a phone call to my husband, who had earlier navigated this labyrinth of Chinese restaurants, pawn shops, and car title stores. 

Once I escaped the Division of Motor Vehicles (where I had to pay a very hefty amount of money to make my car Hellscape legal), I headed to the Big Box Hellscape. Here, at least, there was a bookstore, a Big Box bookstore, but one where I was able to find the books on my reading list even though I had forgotten the titles of those books and the names of the authors. I remembered enough to be able to scan the shelves to find what I needed--and even to pick up a book that was not on my list but which captured my attention as one I might like to read.

And that was the good thing I did: I went shopping for books. Well, I think, probably, the better thing I could have done was to go to a library and check out those books, but I can't be TOO good.

 

(Click on the photo above to see the books I'm anticipating reading. My son immediately snatched up David Eagleman's Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain and is almost midway through it.)

SAPP to BN govt: Don’t shift your own Failure to manage properly and Burden the Rakyat unnecessarily.

Malaysia is one of the few oil and gas producing countries in the world. Sabah especially, being rich in oil and gas, has been contributing millions and millions of Ringgit to the Malaysian government.

Electricity is a basic utility and being one of the most basic needs for people, it comes as both logical and obligatory for the BN government to provide for a stable, reliable and affordable supply of electricity to a contributing state like Sabah in return.

SAPP CLC Api Api Organizing Secretary Clement Lee says that it is totally unfair, unjustifiable and unacceptable, relating to the press statement issued by the Datuk Seri Peter Chin today (24/6/2011) with The Daily Express carrying the title “Power Tariff Review” was due to the increase of the fuel prices.

Clement Lee would like to ask TNB (which owns SESB), the main electricity supplier in the state, how it can still make losses in a monopoly state of business, like that of Sabah's ?

The main causes of loss incurred by TNB and SESB are mainly due to mismanagement, incompetency, poor planning and execution methodology, lopsided deals, high maintenance costs due to the purchase of used and second-hand power generators, parts and very possibly, inferior services.

The compensation of about RM70 million to a Chinese company due to the scrapping of the coal power plant in Sabah recently proved yet again that poor management, planning and decision making have caused our tax money to go down the drain. The government should have consulted the state assembly, people and NGOs before committing and signing an agreement with the supplier to prevent wastage of time, money and other resources.

This was clearly contradicting to the BN's 1Malaysia slogan “People first, Achievement is main priority”.

Another one of the contributing factors that made TNB and SESB suffered losses was due to power theft mainly committed by illegal immigrant in the state which prove to be a long term liability to the government.

The people of Sabah have been suffering and enduring with one of the highest cost of living of any states in Malaysia and yet the lowest take-home pay, especially for young working adults for umpteenth years.

I reckon the present BN government will need to solve its internal problems first as mentioned above before shifting the burden to the people.

So, the suggestion by Datuk Seri Chin Fah Kui to review the current electricity state tariff is totally unfair, unjustifiable and utterly unacceptable.

Clement Lee is SAPP CLC Api Api Organising Secretary

Schoolgirl takes on oldest trade

Schoolgirl rakes in RM30,000 by selling body

A SECONDARY school student made RM30,000 during the year-end school break last year by prostituting herself, China Press reported.

It said the student from Kuala Lumpur charged customers RM250 to RM800 each so that she could indulge in luxury items.

“I have sex at least five times a day. However, I take a week's break each month,” she told the paper.

The girl said she was cutting down on her sexual services this year as she wanted to prepare for the SPM examinations.

According to the daily, the girl was among many students who used Facebook to earn money through sex and buy luxury items they covet and one even said she had listed her sex service on a website to earn money to buy an iPhone.

Most of them were from Johor Baru, Malacca, Kuala Lumpur and Penang.

Customers are asked to pay up to RM300 per session and RM600 if the customer wanted an overnight sex session.

The paper reported that the girls charged RM3,000 if their customers wanted to have them for a month.

It also said the girls offered telephone sex at RM150 per call and sent a photograph of them in the nude through the mobile phone for RM10 per copy.

The paper's reporter contacted one of the girls through SMS and Internet messaging service by posing as a customer.

Some girls used Facebook to cheat potential customers they stopped using their Facebook accounts after getting money from potential customers.

The paper passed on the information it had gathered on the sex service to the Johor police.

The police said they would investigate the matter.

Quoted from the Star

US experts: It's Anwar

US experts confirmed Anwar as man in video, court told

KUALA LUMPUR, June 24 — US authorities have identified the man in the controversial sex video screened by “Datuk T” as Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, a magistrate’s court was told this morning.

The point was raised in the facts of the case read out today after the “Datuk T” trio of Datuk Shazryl Eskay Abdullah, Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Thamby Chik and Datuk Shuib Lazim pleaded guilty to their involvement in the screening of the video on March 21.

“Results of the analysis by experts from Dartmouth College, Handover, New Hampshire in the US verified the authenticity of the video, that there was no tampering or any act of super-imposing and that it originated from a DVR camcorder taken from Datuk Shazryl,” deputy public prosecutor Kamalluddin Md Said said when reading the facts of the case this morning.

Abdul Rahim’s lawyer Datuk Seri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, who also submitted on the point, told reporters later that according to the experts’ report, it was 99.99 per cent certain that the man in the video is Anwar.

By Clara Chooi