Malayasia Matters Podcast

Karpal Singh has decided to make peace with Anwar Ibrahim as head of the PRK coalition:

AFTER challenging Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim openly for weeks over issues surrounding party hopping, Karpal Singh said he accepted the former as head of Pakatan Rakyat.

Karpal Singh told the Dewan that there was no more misunderstanding between the Opposition leader and him.

“Any misunderstanding was between us, and is none of Barisan Nasional’s business,” he said during his debate on the motion of thanks on the Royal Address.

But is seems Singh couldn't do it without more fireworks:

Karpal Singh also said the 100 police reports made against him recently were vicious.

“Tuan Speaker, this must be a world record – 100 reports, two bullets,” he said, adding: “Under the Internal Security Act, it is mandatory death sentence for a person who sends even one bullet.”

“I want to know how Umno Youth got the bullets and sent them to me?” he said.

Datuk Abd Rahman Dahlan (BN – Kota Belud) retorted: “How can you say it’s Umno Youth? Do you have the proof?”

Datuk Ismail Mohamed Said (BN – Kuala Krau) said Karpal Singh should retract the allegation.

Urged by Deputy Speaker Datuk Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, Karpal Singh retracted the word “celaka” he used when he accused the wing.

“Jangan main-main dengan saya (Don’t play with me). Don’t forget that King is Singh and Singh is King,” he said, in obvious reference to a popular Bollywood movie with the same catchline.

It even resulted in a confrontation:

DAP chairman and MP for Bukit Gelugor Karpal Singh was confronted by a group of Selangor Umno Youth members at the Parliament tower block this afternoon but this soon culminated in a shouting match and a scuffle that led MP for Segambut Lim Lip Eng to having his shirt tugged.

The group had been waiting at the parliament tower for Karpal and as soon as he arrived they surrounded him and started heckling him over his warning to Pemuda Umno yesterday.

The soap opera atmosphere continues.  And at least some people find it exhausting.  Dina Zaman needs a break:

I don’t know about you, but come March 8, 2009, I’ll be an exhausted bunny. Not a month passes without an epic socio-political drama. I am not a political analyst, and neither am I political, but as a reading and concerned Malaysian, like all my family and friends, we’re pretty much tired of it all.

We understand that parts of democracy and growth are facing challenges and dealing with changes, but how much longer can the current goings-on be promoted as governance? And when will Malaysia not depend on personality-driven politics?

To regain my sanity and sense of balance, I resolve not to read news for a week. It is going to be hard, but I think I need that distance. It’d be good if the media fast lasts a month, but I don’t think I am that saintly.

A citizen labeled "A CONCERNED MALAYSIAN" is tired as well, but their letter to the editor express a more serious concern:

MALAYSIAN politics is cast in the limelight once again but for all the wrong reasons. Frankly, I am sickened by the spate of gutter tactics that pervade our political arena as of late.

The straw that broke the camel’s back came when our newspapers carried news of Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek’s sex scandal once again, more than a year after it first came to light.

As a Malaysian struggling with day-to-day issues such as job security, possible pay cuts, high cost of living and poor standards of services, I do not have the time to analyse the motive of why the sex DVD resurfaced again, nor am I interested to know more.

[...]

I hope that our leaders can restore the faith we used to have in our system and Government. One way is to introduce policies that have a positive effect which we can feel in our everyday lives.

I am reminded of the recent Merdeka polls findings where it was stated that the majority of Malaysians reject morally-tainted leaders.

More so, Malaysians are sick and tired of antics of downtrodden leaders who try to invoke public sympathy for their personal political gain.

I think that the politician and party that can be seen as addressing the economic and domestic issues in a serious way will have a clear advantage in the coming months.  Even in modern politics there is only so much scandal and drama voters can take.

Azmi Anshar has some interesting commentary in the wake of the Elizabeth Wong scandal:

As it happens in some extra-adventurous relationship, Wong was snapped sleeping in a delectable position by her then boyfriend, which was very private, very fine and very none-of-our business, until the boyfriend, by this time an ex-beau, decided to impose those intimately clickable moments to an unsuspecting but wildly receptive crowd.

Elizabeth Wong’s world, the one she built with activist gusto and political idealism, practically collapsed overnight.

Sex, scandal and aberrant behaviour categorised under sex and scandal is perhaps the most seductive social spectacle in Malaysia, followed by Byzantine/Machiavellian politics like the brutish kind you see in Ipoh and Kuala Kangsar, and murder of the most heinous classification, like the horror in Ampang where a killer or killers slashed to death a family but spared the life of a one-year old. The madness is always pre-meditated, it would seem.

But, in the Malaysian scheme of things where tenuous crumbs of hinted scandal is good enough for a full-blown case, Elizabeth Wong has been hounded and ridiculed…and it’s not even her fault.

But events have a force of their own in these situations:

As her situation is made to become untenable, Elizabeth Wong remains doggedly veracious to her probity. A telling remark from her weepy Press conference: “…I have done no wrong. I wish to state that I am not ashamed of my sexuality as a woman and as a single person. I have broken no law. I stand by the fundamental principle of a democracy that everyone has a right to privacy…,” may have been her last defiant scorn against the hypocrisy that shammed her.

What Elizabeth did, or did not do, hardly qualifies as a scandal or discreditable action. It was her enemies who made that characterisation and because of that and because she offered to resign, the slap-in-the-face scandal that implicated her somehow fits into the definition of “damaging one’s reputation”, no matter how hard she declares or proves that she has not committed a crime.

This is a pity. If anything, the services of a competent and conscientious politician/activist may have been squandered but one would greatly hope, not lost permanently to wilderness and oblivion.

Zainul Arifin, also at the New Straits Times, agrees but says that's politics:

When stumping for our votes, politicians claim that they are the best to represent us, and that they are better than the other candidate. It is implicit in their claims that they are upstanding citizens of good moral values, good enough for us to trust to represent us, to champion our rights and causes, in Parliament or state assemblies.

Wong may be all of the above, but in politics perception rules. Her private life is, of course, hers, and unfortunately, as a politician, it's the public's, too.

The release of the pictures was obviously meant to embarrass her, which it did. But it also offered our prying eyes a peek into her personal life, a fact Wong alluded to when she suggested that she is single and sexually active.

This is where it gets dicey. Most of us would live by the principle of live and let live, and do not give two hoots about private and personal matters such as this.

But Wong the politician understands that there are people who do mind, and some could be in her constituency, hence her offer to resign. Despite the best of intentions and support of her party leaders and coalition partners,Wong is doing right by her party so that it need not have to make the hard decision of asking her to go.

Harsh as it may sound, it is nothing personal, it's politics. The rough and tumble world of politics gives no quarter.

The Malaysian Insider takes an equally cynical but harsher - and larger - view:

The fact is, morality in Malaysian life, and particularly in politics, is measured by the goings-on in the bedroom rather than the machinations in the boardroom.

Those caught with bulging pockets might still live to fight another day but those caught with their pants down lose everything.

It does not matter if the photographs or videos were taken without consent, as in the case of Elizabeth and Chua, or privately, as in the Vijandran scandal.

What matters is public perception and morality as defined by the few over the many.

It’s a perverse morality but one that is bound in so-called Eastern traditions that what happens in the bedroom should be private and never see the light in any visible form. Any such recordings, even unwittingly, cast aspersions on a person’s character and morals.

(Oddly, oral or aural accounts – so-and-so sleeps with so-and-so – seem survivable since they’re not proof, just rumours, unlike pictures that are deemed incapable of lying.)

But bribery, graft, money politics and corruption is forgivable and, after some time in the political sin bin and wilderness, one can always make a comeback.

Double standards? But that’s the reality that Elizabeth found herself up against over the past 24 hours.

Politics, particularly democratic politics, is rarely pretty.  But at some point the debate will, one hopes, return to who is best suited to leading Malaysia through the difficult economic times ahead.

Some interesting commentary in the Malaysia Star.  First, is Baradan Kuppusamy pointing out that what goes around comes around:

PR has found out the hard way that defections can work against it as one defection has led to another, with one more in the offing. The Pakatan government in Perak is now staring at a collapse.

IN the CIA’s dictionary blowback is a term used to describe unintended consequences of covert operations, meaning that things do come back to haunt you.

Likewise political defections can work both ways and return to haunt the perpetrator as the crisis in Perak shows with the Pakatan Rakyat coalition government in danger of collapsing after two PKR exco members as good as defected, leaving it holding on precariously by a one-seat majority.

And he argues that whatever the outcome Anwar has damaged his party and his image:

Meanwhile, Anwar will find it hard to live down the damage done to PKR and PR for championing defections as a legitimate political tool despite serious criticism from academics, political scientists and even PR leaders like DAP national chairman Karpal Singh who had consistently opposed engineering defections for numerous reasons, all well known by now.

The tragedy is that the ill-conceived strategy has come home to roost affecting the Pakatan government in Perak which was doing an admirable job but now faces collapse because of PKR’s inability to prevent its representatives from defecting in a “blowback” it had not expected.

In this letter to the editor Ahmad Hussein makes the same point, albeit a bit more sarcastically:

IF there is anyone to be blamed for party defections, it should be PKR supremo Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

He was the one, in his obsession to take over as the Prime Minister, who encouraged party hopping and even set the Sept 16 deadline.

His followers, many of whom unfortunately have become slavish idol worshippers, have conveniently forgotten this.

He wooed and persuaded Barisan Nasional elected representatives, especially from Sabah and Sarawak, to defect. Please do not tell us that these targets of his were not promised positions of power. We were not born yesterday.

Then, he convinced the State Assemblyman for Bota in Perak to join PKR. Of course, it was all in the name of principles and serving the people.

If it were PKR, DAP or PAS-elected representatives, they would have been condemned and accused of selling out the people.

Are we to believe that PKR does not buy elected representatives, given the huge financial resources they have now?

It is strange that Anwar has not called for the Bota assemblyman Datuk Nasarudin Hashim to step down so that a fresh by-election can be held. What kind of double standards is this?

Anwar is said to have played a major role in over-throwing the PBS state government under Datuk Seri Joseph Pairin Kitingan. The undated resignation letters were found to be invalid and useless then.

Now, we are told by the Pakatan Rakyat leaders that these letters are valid. Come on, again, double talk.

Anwar has opened the flood gates, and if more PKR and DAP assemblymen from Perak quit, he deserves it because he started the game.

It remains to be seen if this will provide an oppertunity for BN to regain some of the lost momentum and weaken Anwar's coalition.  You would think Anwar would focus on elections since he has been winning them, but he seems impatient for taking power and so began this party switching campaign.  And it may come back to bite him.

There are some important things to be discussed during this week's meeting of ASEAN member nations, not the least of which is the ever-mounting concern over the welfare of member populations amidst increasing costs of commodities. With such a serious agenda, it would seem unlikely that the ongoing sensationalist headlines about opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim would prove much of a distraction amongst the ministerial delegations. 

But ASEAN just announced that it forecasts its declaration on human rights will be done within a year.  Perhaps the occasion will offer folks back home in Malaysia the impetus to seriously reflect upon institutions there.  For instance, what about the basic rights of those accused of a crime? To be sure, Anwar is making political hay of his situation, best as he can, but in all fairness, why, having since been jailed and bailed, has he been unable to see a copy of the police report?

Officials point out that they are following procedure to the letter, but why not just give Anwar the report? Amidst the hubbub, there have been reassurances that the government is doing just fine, but why the need for reassurances? To a certain extent, the government is helping fuel Anwar's ongoing commentary.

Getting the easy stuff right and quickly out of the way helps show folks that the government is acting on the up and up; that it is transparent. And transparency never hurts, unless there is something to hide.

Apropos of the Melaka posts of late, there is a truly outstanding piece in the Wall Street Journal Asia on the difficulties of historic preservation in that eminently historic town. You can only read it as a PDF -- scroll to page 11 -- but it is well worth your time.

Sure, the 2008 Miss Malaysia Universe pageant is underway, but have you seen the real celebration of Malaysian poise and beauty? I speak, of course, of Malaysian Dreamgirl. Behold:

High art it ain't, but as a glimpse into Malaysia's pop culture scene -- and its intersection with the wired young set -- it's not too bad. Note the ready Anglophone tendencies of the contestants and the local television news: that's a society plugged in to the wider world.