Tired and retired... ?
- From: pluto <pluto@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 20:52:43 +0800
http://www.malaysiakini.com/frame/eNrLKCkpsNLXLy8v18tKTUvLz8/US87P1U8sSs7ILEst1jcyMDDVNzTUL8ksSk2JT8xLiS9KBbL1CjIKAHfBFRo=
Screenshots...
Friday, November 18, 2005
Tired and retired... ?
Don't ask me about the transmitter and the recipient. There is a website
somewhere, I was told. "Let's wait for the handwriting analyst to call,"
one of the lines says.
Posted by jeffooi at November 18, 2005 10:53 PM
Comments
jeff, i think you blogged about this a couple of months back, do not have a
clue then and now! by the way, what happened to the snr editorial staff?
Posted by: polis at November 19, 2005 01:07 AM
IS IT THE BEGINNING OF A CLEAN UP ?
The guilty verdict on Tan Sri Mohamed Isa Abdul Samad and a six-year
suspension from Umno signals the unwavering commitment of Datuk Seri
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to rid the party of money politics. The question is:
Will more suffer the same fate?
WHEN THE Umno disciplinary board hauled up Tan Sri Mohamed Isa Abdul Samad,
the Federal Territories Minister and one of the party?s three elected vice
presidents, on June 23, the outcome was obvious ? the charges of money
politics and breach of party regulations against him were proven.
The speculation of a guilty verdict became more obvious when he appeared
not before the entire board but only three of its members.
Although it was reported that he was cross-examined for nearly two hours,
his appearance, it would now seem, was more of a formality. The board is
known to have been deliberating his case for some time now by calling
scores of witnesses.
The following day ? June 24 ? Isa was informed of a guilty verdict and a
six-year suspension. He also lost the post of Teluk Kemang Umno Chief.
Going down with him were his political secretary Mohd Salim Sharif, a
Pahang State Executive Councillor Datuk Shahirudin Ab Moin and Pandan
Division Deputy Head Jamaluddin Ropa.
Salim and Jamaluddin were suspended for three years each and Shahirudin
two.
Umno leaders had, for years, been acknowledging that the party was plagued
by money politics. Over that period, a sizeable number of lesser party
officials had been put on trial, found guilty and punished. Some were
suspended from the party while others were let off with warnings.
But by all reckoning, the fear that the party was being torn asunder by
widespread use of money and other forms of inducements became a reality in
last year?s party election, when unlikely candidates scored stunning
victories in the vice president and Supreme Council contests.
Following the election, the talk of money politics was not only rife among
grass-roots members and delegates, but also among the high party officials.
They openly acknowledged that vote buying was widespread, but stopped short
of naming the culprits.
In taking on Isa, who received the highest number of votes in the vice
president race, the party has sent an unmistakable warning that enough is
enough.
The seriousness of the party was further compounded by the fact that both
the President, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and the Deputy President,
Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak, declared their non-interference.
They must be congratulated for their unwavering desire to rid the party of
money politics and other forms of abuse.
The momentum has been created and it will be a major blow to public
confidence if the party stops with Isa. After all, it takes two to tango.
In all likelihood, the disciplinary board has already been examining other
top echelon suspects.
As for his ministerial position, Isa is as good as gone. Any reprieve would
only be to enable him to bring his case to the Appeals Committee.
Having suspended Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) Secretary-General and
Teluk Kemang Barisan Nasional MP Datuk S Sothinathan as Deputy Natural
Resources and Environment Minister for breaking ranks with the government
over the accreditation of the Crimea State Medical University, it would be
untenable for both the Prime Minister and Isa to maintain the status quo.
Royals to the Rescue
?DO NOT lie to me. It?s a sin. We are Muslims and this is a religious
school, day and night you are taught about the holiness of the religion.?
The above statement, reported by the Utusan Malaysia newspaper on June 15,
was not from a teacher, a politician or a judge. It wasn?t even from an
angry ustaz.
They were the words of a disappointed Sultan of Pahang, Sultan Ahmad Shah.
The occasion was his private ?trial? of a group of students of the
Al-Maidah Addiniah religious secondary school in Padang Tengku, Kuala
Lipis, for allegedly bullying and injuring a fellow student.
?As politicians, you all must strive to free society from corruption along
with the rest of the citizens as stipulated under the National Integrity
Plan.?
The above was the titah (address) of the Sultan of Selangor, Sultan
Sharafuddin Idris Shah, when opening the second term of the 11th State
Legislative Assembly in Shah Alam on April 23 as reported by The Star
newspaper.
Earlier, when swearing in the State Executive Councillors, the Sultan was
quoted by National News Agency Bernama as saying: ?During campaigning, they
(the assemblymen) were willing to go to remote villages and passed through
paddy fields, back lanes, wholesale markets and other places to convince
the voters.
?Now they still have to go to the villages to fulfill the promises made to
the people. I was informed that the people did not even recognise their
previous assemblymen.?
Royalty with a heart
OVER in Perak, the Raja Muda, Raja Dr Nazrin Shah, speaking at the second
Malay Education Congress in March, stated: ?Surrounded by individuals who
do not have inherent strength, the Rulers become complacent. Mengampu
(sycophancy) becomes a culture. Truths are no longer appreciated. Thus, the
Rulers receive the wrong advice.?
And they are not alone. Other Malay Rulers are also beginning to speak
their minds on contemporary issues and events affecting the people.
It appears that they are no longer satisfied with reading texts prepared by
the state secretariats or doing the things scripted by politicians and
civil servants.
This has to be an interesting development. They are speaking up on issues
and events that, under normal circumstances, are in the domain of politics
and administration.
Could this signal the birth of a new brand of activism among our Rulers in
response to what has been perceived as the failure of the political,
administrative and civil society institutions to address the contemporary
concerns of the people, like deteriorating discipline in schools,
environmental degradation, abuse of power and corruption?
In any power-sharing system, the strength of one component is relative to
the other. Of course, the ideal situation would be for the strength and
integrity of one to promote the other.
Hopefully, this growing royal activism will spur our elected
representatives and civil servants to serve the people better.
Give the poor a helping hand
THIS bring us to the subject of International Trade and Industry Minister
Datuk Seri Rafidah Aziz, who was reported by the New Straits Times (NST) as
having ?snapped? after learning that the Kuala Kangsar Municipal Council
had proposed RM51.5 million for landscaping against RM1.5 million for
poverty eradication under the forthcoming 9th Malaysia Plan.
?Tourism is tourism, but we have to take care of the people too,? she was
quoted as saying. Rafidah, who is the Kuala Kangsar MP, urged the council
to review the budget. The council responded by defending its decision.
It would not come as a surprise if such topsy-turvy budgets ? to borrow
NST?s description ? have also been proposed by other local authorities,
departments and ministries.
Let?s face it, poverty eradication is no longer in vogue with a lot of
economic planners. It?s not glamorous.
Even elected representatives are reluctant to press for poverty eradication
budgets, fearing it would create the impression that their constituencies
are backward, and that after successive general elections, they had failed
to improve the lot of their people.
But the bigger worry is the reason for spending huge sums of money on
landscaping and other cosmetic projects at the expense of the poor.
Could it be because there is money to be made in appropriating contracts
for landscaping and other cosmetic projects because they do not normally
attract public attention?
At the rate some local authorities are cutting down trees and replanting
them, the impression created is that someone somewhere is deliberately
doing this to create an opportunity to make some side income.
A reader?s letter published by Utusan Malaysia on June 23 under the
headline kakitangan kerajaan tagih wang kontraktor (government officers
demand money from contractors) says it all.
On the other hand, it is a lot more difficult to skim off the money
allocated to the poor. Even the most unscrupulous of officers and
contractors might be bothered by the fact that they are stealing from the
poor.
In the final analysis, however, the onus rests with the wakil rakyat. They
should be the ones playing a central role in driving the planning and
implementation of public projects.
Having dug deep into my pockets and sold my stocks and shares at a loss in
the moribund Bursa Malaysia in order to clear my income tax arrears, I
think I am entitled, in the hadhari spirit, to implore our wakil rakyat and
civil servants to honour their commitment to voters and taxpayers.
Just in case they do not fear the voters and taxpayers, they should, at
least, fear God.
Of Pensioners and Annual General Meetings
IF I were a civil servant, I would have been compulsorily retired two years
ago. Save for a seven-year stint in the public sector in the 1960s and
1970s, I have always been in the private sector.
So, despite having passed the compulsory retirement age of 55, I continue
to work. Thus, to feel what being a pensioner was all about or part
thereof, I recently attended the annual general meeting (AGM) of The New
Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Bhd (NSTP) as a minority shareholder.
In Malaysia, it seems only pensioners and elderly people regularly attend
shareholders? meetings. The controlling shareholders are represented by the
board of directors, while large institutional investors usually appoint the
chairman of the meeting as their proxy. So, seated among the pensioners and
digging into the goody bag to check what door gift I had received, I felt
very much like a pensioner.
It was fun. We raised hands to propose, second and vote for the resolutions
put forward, although we were unhappy with the paltry five-sen-a-share
final dividend the company was proposing.
We asked questions knowing fully well that we would more likely be humoured
with some dismissive answers instead of being honoured with serious
analysis. Some of the younger managers and newer directors clearly didn?t
know who we were.
Other than the fun of collecting door gifts, which, in this particular
instance, comprised of a single white T-shirt with the new Berita Harian
masthead, an AGM offers a once-a-year opportunity for minority shareholders
to air their views and grouses to the corporate bigwigs.
For minority shareholders, this isn?t a good time. Take the NSTP for
example. If you had invested in the company?s shares a decade or more ago ?
as I had ? you would have suffered considerable capital depreciation.
This is not surprising. According to a recent report in The Star, some RM35
billion in market capitalisation had been wiped out from Bursa Malaysia in
last month?s market sell-off.
The five-sen-per-share dividend paid by the NSTP might not be great. After
paying corporate income tax, it is barely sufficient to offset rising
inflation, which, according to the latest Bank Negara Malaysia report, had
risen to 3.1% in May ? the highest in six years.
But that isn?t a complete disappointment, considering the fact that the
company did not pay any dividends in 2003 and 2001. Business-wise, having
sold most of its non-newspaper assets acquired in the good old days two to
three decades ago, the NSTP?s future rests heavily on the performance of
its media-related activities.
The share price is another key consideration. From the high of RM18.60 in
2000, the NSTP?s share price has been hovering between RM2.90 and RM4.20 in
the last 52 weeks.
Yours Allegedly
LET us now consider a hypothetical letter written by a certain newsman to
his media colleague. It goes something like this.
A certain Mr A, who was attending a certain media conference in a certain
East Asian capital, had made a phone call to the letter writer.
The letter writer said they joked about Mr A being in trouble for writing
an article criticising a certain retired senior politician.
The letter writer said he was taken aback when Mr A informed him that a
certain Group Editor-in-Chief of a certain publishing company had been
passing a certain ?venomous? comment about him and Mr A.
(Let us, for convenience sake, call this ?bad? editor Mr B.) The letter
writer asked Mr A how he knew this. Mr A told him that a certain Chief News
Editor of a certain newspaper (let us call him Mr C), had informed him.
After he got off the phone with Mr A, the letter writer called Mr C who,
purportedly, informed him that Mr B had made the comment to a certain
senior writer of a certain newspaper (let us call her Miss D).
The letter writer went on to allege that Miss D ?had been, in turn, telling
people at your office and outside?.
The letter writer told his friend of more than two decades that he had
initially decided ?to let it be because in this business, just like
politics, you become the target of vicious rumours and lies?.
Mr B, the letter writer told his friend, had ?for the past few months been
attacking both my establishment and I, apart from the usual nasty comments
about people like Khairy Jamaluddin?.
Of course, said the letter writer, anyone with two cents worth of intellect
would know that it is preposterous to even think that the editor of a
newspaper could instruct the editor of another newspaper to write any
article, asserting that he did not even do that with his own editors.
He went on to state that: ?I would have ignored Miss D?s loose tongue and
Mr B?s venom. But in this case I fear the implications are too serious
because it could get out of hand and create misunderstandings and even more
serious problems on a political level.?
The writer implored his friend to verify all that he had stated with Mr A,
Mr C, a certain Chinese Tan Sri, a Malay Datuk and his (the letter
writer?s) partner. Business partner I presume.
He concluded: ?If I am harsh about my views about these people, it is
because I believe that in their hearts, they are bad. I would not say this
lightly about many people. But they are bad people.?
This hypothetical letter has been hypothetically carbon-copied to the Prime
Minister and Deputy Prime Minister for good measure.
Some very serious allegations my friends ? loose tongue, venom, blatant
lies, untruths, bad people, nasty comments ?
Posted by: Kelvyn at November 19, 2005 10:17 AM
===============end quote/cross/w/wo/comment============
pluto
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