I love democracy, do you?

Many displays of democracy nowadays for Malaysians to learn.

How have you enjoyed the spirit and principles of democracy so far?

Here’re a simple issue for you to make into conversation or to reflect upon with your buddies. Or, if you can, throw this question to your current / aspirant Member of Parliament.

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Q: Is this Democracy at work?

“Two anti-Bersih groups have surrounded the vicinity of Bersih co-chairperson Ambiga Sreenevasan’s residence today…”

Source: http://malaysiakini.com/news/198937

vs

“BERSIH 3.0 will take the form of a sit-in (“duduk bantah” in Bahasa Malaysia) on April 28th 2012, and will take place across Malaysia and throughout the world….

Through BERSIH 3.0, we will continue our struggle for clean and fair elections, assembling and expressing our views peacefully as are our rights as enshrined in the Federal Constitution…”

Source: http://bersih.org/?p=4696

Why your constituents aren’t giving you their vote

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Why folks who voted your party in the past are not responding to you as passionately now?

For this Malaysia general election (which date may happen now or later at Mr Najib Razak’s whim/fancy/superstition), it is normal to have candidates and aspiring candidates sweating hot over this issue.

Let me venture some reasons why voters passion diverted:

1.  They didn’t receive your message.
2.  They don’t know you.
3.  Your messengers turned them off

 

Feel free to add more to this list, folks!

4 teens 2 rockin ghosts and 1 bully

Me suffering overdose from odious blogposts, tweets, articles and ‘news’ of stupid daily politicking by Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat .

GE13 sure coming. How to elect them election candidates promoted by these odious promoters?

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And so, an opportunity of a nice evening will be highly sought. I think I will go to enjoy this:
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18 songs from 18 different musicals all wrapped up in a delicious and exciting story about 4 teens, 2 rockin’ ghosts and 1 bully. From Broadway standards to 80’s classics and rock anthems, Broadway Bites is fun for the whole family!

Featuring Mae Elliessa, Alia Rasdi, Aaron Khaled, Benjamin Lin, Dominic Luk, Peter Ong, Nicole Ann-Thomas, Nadia Aqilah, Ho Soon Yoon, Johan Yusof, Tim Howe, Wong Hui Lee and many more..

THE SHOW

It’s a hectic afternoon when Theo invites his friends, Kate, Nick and Lulu over to practice for tomorrow’s Glee Club finals. Suddenly Theo’s brother, Max, enters and starts making fun of him; calling him a sissy, embarassing him to storm off. Whilst Kate, Nick and Lulu rush to console Theo, Max is visited by 2 ghosts who try convincing him to stop bullying. Will the ghosts succeed? Will Theo achieve his dream of being on stage? Will this be another happy ending?

Produced and Choreographed by Farah Sulaiman, Directed by Sabrina Hassan with Musical Direction by Nish Tham and Vocal Direction by Peter Ong, come along for a fun night out whilst helping raise funds for education in hospitals (Project Hati Nurani-Sekolah Dalam Hospital).

SONG LIST

1. 13 (13 the Musical)

2. People Will Say We’re in Love (Oklahoma)

3. Fan Tan Fannie (Flower Drum Song)

4. Jet Song (West Side Story)

5. On My Own (Les Miserables)

6. Put On A Happy Face (Bye Bye Birdie)

7. Shake Your Groove Thing (Priscilla Queen of the Desert)

8. Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer (Cats)

9. One Short Day (Wicked)

10 Forty Second Street Reprise (42nd Street)

11. Consider Yourself (Oliver)

12. Children Will Listen (Into the Woods)

13. We Will Rock You (We Will Rock You)

14. Footloose (Footloose)

15. The Song That Goes Like This (Spamalot)

16. Razzle Dazzle (Chicago The Musical)

17. Aquarius (Hair)

18. You Can’t Stop The Beat (Hairspray)

Ticket prices are:

RM53 (matinee)

RM63, RM83, RM103 (night shows)

RM123, RM153, RM203 (gala night – 16 March)

Tickets available at www.ticket2u.biz

Najib Razak, UMNO, BN, Pakatan Rakyat and the Internal Security Act

In a special televised address on eve of Malaysia Day on 15 September 2011, PM Najib Razak announced will abolish the Internal Security Act and amend a number of laws which have long been criticised as overt attempts to stifle democracy:

* Abolishment of Internal Security Act (ISA) 1960, which allows detention without trial.

* Three Emergency declarations to be lifted.

* Amendments to freedom of assembly laws, which will recognise Article 10 of the Federal Constitution but will be “strongly” against street demonstration.

* Annual renewal of publishing permits for newspapers will be replaced with a one-off licence, which can be withdrawn.

* Repeal of Banishment Act 1959 and revision of Restricted Residence Act 1933.

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Fine. Me have no problems with anybody making political promises in public. Freedom of expression, yes?

Now we await for the promise to be carried, to be made into law. Until then, no popping of the champagne bottles yet.

Me not being a grumpy sceptical, just being a citizen well aware of my constitutional rights.

Hope you be too.

No escape from new media effect

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Any advertisement or Public Relations companies which do not have political experts/section, please do not attempt to  do political campaign or anything politics. Your political client’s future may be in danger because of your inadequacy.

*shudder for BN and PR*

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Share with you article found published in Malaysia-today on 14 July 2011:

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Unfortunately for stakeholders in Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat, Malaysia’s political rhythm for the upcoming 13th general election has changed to a new beat from 9 July 2011.

In this new political landscape where the rakyat hold supreme in the choice between Barisan and Pakatan, any forward looking players should now be urgently re-thinking their choice of campaign managers and teams who will play an important role to make or break the political incumbents’ careers or aspirants’ dreams.

Compared with Pakatan which has adopted heavy use of new media much earlier, Barisan is running behind in the race to articulate its messages on this platform. Whether by choice or due to an inability to engineer a mindset turnaround, Barisan’s team has also missed out chances to update its messaging and repair missed touchpoints. Perhaps it might be in serious need of a major overhaul of its voter communication bureaucracies.

For the influential segment of middle class voters who possess more confidence to make a stand on issues and demand for intelligent discourse, BN’s incongruent messages do not synchronize with the people’s vision of 1Malaysia. The incongruous noise also implies a lack of updated skills in political messaging by Barisan’s campaigners, promoters, speakers and spokesmen. One also suspects non-existent political knowhow in the advertising companies managing the BN coalition parties’ or candidate’s media accounts.

Some voters might recall being bombarded by ‘unreal’ messages from political advertisements mostly carried in mainstream newspapers in the 12th general election campaign. Due to its misalignment to voters’ sentiment, some might recall being amused by BN’s manifesto’s theme ‘Selamat, Aman, Makmur’ or MCA’s ad depicting its President still cycling around the new village.

Those messages may have worked well in the days before new media became a daily work, communication and information essential.

According to the Election Commission, Malaysia has 11.82 million registered voters after the supplementary electoral roll for the fourth quarter of 2010 was gazetted recently. In June 2010, there were 16.9 million internet users in Malaysia (representing 64.6% of the population) according to Internet World Stats.

Certainly these data presents a huge opportunity to extend the power of messaging beyond traditional platforms or hardsell to reach the hearts and minds of Gen X and Y families, especially the new voters.

The new media platform exposes its users to diverse perspectives and is a tool to politicize younger people. Today’s voters are disengaged from the traditional ideas of political loyalty and places more value on issues of governance and civil discourse.

Today’s middle class talk about values and rights of an individual. It may even be perceived as a form of cruelty, a turnoff or politically incorrect behavior to cast aspersion via character assassination or cliché to bespattering someone with metaphorical mud. Thence, it was no surprise that individuals ‘guilty’ of moral indiscretions were elected or appointed to office as the value creation from harnessing their career skills carried more weightage against other considerations.

No longer bound to thought limitations of mainstream newspapers, radio and television, your fellow citizens are free to watch and compare ideas on the worldwide internet almost everyday and communicate their expanded worldview to share with their families, relatives and friends in the rural areas or globally.

This complicates and presents a huge challenge to candidates contesting in the urban and semi-urban constituencies. Any political campaigners worth their salt must possess listening experience on the internet before embarking on the political trail to try to persuade voters to listen to their candidate’s message.

As always for political players and stakeholders, fresh approaches to politics are absolutely necessary to convince voters beyond traditional offers of lunch, dinner or charity.

There is no escaping the new media effect and for sure, at any given time, the world may be watching and sharing through the internet what one is saying today or have said yesterday.

By: Ho Aoi Ling
The writer is a social media listening specialist and heads an independent think tank in Kuala Lumpur. She may be reached at cleat.clew@gmail.com or Twitter http://twitter.com/aoiling

Guilty. Malaysia Members of Parliament

Was too angry to post anything last few days.

How can one not be angry when a good man was betrayed in death by the laws of the country and a man who caused his sufferings and eventual death was virtually let off with a slap on the wrist? Imagine his family’s feelings at being let down by law.

Read this.

Do you know, we cannot blame the courts or the judge, as they can only be guided by laws set by Parliament. We have to be aware the instrument to protect the country and its people is the Malaysia laws and in this case, the transport laws have not moved with the times!

How come important laws have not been updated before we were told by Najib Razak that we should dream to become a high income nation?

What have all our Member of Parliaments and NGOs been doing all these years? So busy with Barisan Nasional or Pakatan Rakyat partisanship that they neglected to fight to update laws to protect the real rakyat?

Don’t give me the excuse ‘because one is not the government, one cannot do anything’. It is now time to name and find out if any of our MPs has been faithfully ‘memperjuangkan’ laws be updated to protect the rakyat. Let’s see if we can make up even a minimum total of 10% from the 222 MPs in the house fulfiling their responsibility to push for laws updating.

MPs, you are the ones who should say sorry to the nation, you are part of the body responsible that made Malaysians lives cheap enough for hit and run perpetrators all these years.

This coming general election, we must question all election candidates thoroughly before we even consider to donate a vote to them – Ask them bluntly and demand for substantive reply on what will they do to push laws to be updated so that justice can be fair to the people, or a husband, a father, a grandfather like Ong Kim Koon. Rakyat should not be apologetically relegated to just a number in the statistics just because of archaic laws – MPs do you job or risk be replaced in next GE.

Still am very angry.

So, how about a score for Sarawak?

I’m trying to vary the contents of me blog. Boring will it be if it solely be bananafied’s voice always (in Yoda language).

So, here’s another article from a friend in Sarawak to dedicate to BC’s dear readers. Any comments, you know what to do lar.

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How About A Score For Sarawak?

There is one important question that a proud Sarawakian voter will question their election candidates before they pre-qualify them, especially to the novice politicians before letting them make long range policies on behalf of the people of the state.

We all know about those familiar faced candidates who have been involved in mapping out the Sarawak State Assembly policy for its economic and education future. From the Barisan Nasional’s side, they’re the ones who have been seen participating and contributed input into drawing up of crucial state developmental policies like education which achieved its goal of establishing 3 public universities, 3 private universities, 38 private colleges or university branch campuses. Another important developmental policy for the economic growth is outlined in SCORE (Sarawak Corridor Of Renewable Energy) that we keep reading about in the newspaper ever since BN highlighted it prominently in their manifesto.

Before we proceed, let’s arrive at a common understanding of what is a manifesto. According to Wikipedia, it is a public declaration of policy and aims, especially one issued before an election by a political party or candidate.

For this round of the Sarawak state election, the manifestos from both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat are already disseminated to the voting public and hopefully will not escape the scrutinizing of the all voters who may or may not be partial to any contesting party.

Let’s check out BN’s manifesto which actually has a long range plan via Score to change Sarawak to become the richest State in Malaysia. According the elaboration, Score would increase the state’s per capita income to RM97,500 by 2030, compared with RM45,000 in 2020 and RM37,287 last year.

So, what’s in the Score that is relevant to the normal man who needs to make a living from day to day to feed his family? A further check with the manifesto (by the way, this is a good authority to reference now that it is a made as promise by BN) says that Score is capable of generating 836,000 jobs by 2030, including 44,000 at the professional and management levels as well as 82,000 engineering and technical jobs. Ok, increase of job opportunities checked for the future.

Next, which sector of the economy that BN tells me I should guide my children to specialise in their studies so that they can ride on the economic road map?

Vide Score, BN will give special emphasis to oil, aluminium, iron, glass, marine engineering and food processing in the halal hub. Ok, checked – areas of education for children to pursue in their studies, if they do so desire.

Additionally, BN promises to do the following which I don’t think anybody will pick a quarrel with:
• The protection of the environment,
• The preservation of the culture,
• Traditions of all the peoples in the state; generating more employment and business opportunities;
• Providing more education opportunities and guaranteeing the people’s rights over their lands.
• Improve quality of life, basic amenities and infrastructure eg: roads, water supply, electricity, health services and housing would be provided.

Well, so much for BN’s manifesto.

What does Pakatan Rakyat’s 10 point manifesto tell voters?

Basically, to give the state’s wealth to the people. guarantee of freedom of religion, free WiFi to move Sarawak into a knowledge-state, a Competency, Accountability and Transparency system of governance, respecting the 18-points agreement and a promise to investigate allegations of ill-gotten wealth of BN leaders and their cronies.

Kudos for display of nice ideals and admirable aspiration, realistically please give details of your long range plans to your intelligent voters? How about a policy plan to 2020 or beyond to prove Pakatan’s here to stay, Baru Bian? Do consider this important hallmark of a government before attempting to score for the Pakatan ship.

By: Bintang Bulan

Let a wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion

An excited friend admonished me:

“My dear BC, why are you keeping silent on the Sarawak state election? It is really exciting here in Kuching, the crowds here get to listen to really good talks by opposition every night, DAP speakers are good and entertaining, SUPP not as fiery, but seems like the new chap Dr. Sim Kui Hian is steady and looks like a very reliable politician – if he is elected lar…”

My friend… I’m still in holiday mood and will opt to not side any one party at the moment. So, Sarawakian friends will be missing out on my knify sharp political analysis this week, hehehe.

Anyways, to sooth friends who are buoyed by the highs courtesy of opposition speakers, share with you something I’ve gotten from another savvy friend.

Until next week,

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Let a wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion

It is a common human fallacy to generalize issues when trying to justify one’s argument in order to KO the opponent. Who haven’t heard of someone who will say “He/she is so typical of a xxx (insert race/category of profession) therefore he/she is (insert assumption of undesirable action here).”

Let’s not be ashamed to admit it, most of us might have done it conscious or unconsciously. Even the DAP and other opposition parties tend to do this ‘natural’ thing. Usually, the members of the opposition will strike first with accusations of xxx (insert preferred presumptions of guilt before trial here). And then it is followed up by bombardments and arguments to stir up the public’s emotion with insinuated wrongdoings such as, “xxx is rich, therefore xxx is corrupted”. This is a well worn method as human beings are found to be intrigued by real or imagined scandals especially if it can blacken the image of the more famous member of the community.

But if one were to dig deeper, one will find that the argument was not wholesome and skewed to be lopsided towards the interest of the opposition. For instance, when debating issues of development, the attacker will not acknowledge truths of how the whole community has also benefited to rise up to better living as compared to their forefather’s hard environment which seriously lacked the economic public infrastructure built up since then. There was no recognition for work and effort put in by the state to satisfy and balance various communities’ demands, sensitivities and interpretations of social justice.

One is reminded how the Chinese who are generally well recognised for their belief in ‘Dao’ and that everything in the universe have a black and white perspective that balances each side for a harmonious life existence. Many Chinese sayings have been handed down since the ancient sage kings to disseminate their wisdom to guide the new generations to balance all sides of each story. Indeed, this has given rise to the general perception that all Chinese are pragmatic practitioners capable of understanding the Dao of both sides of the story before making hasty decisions.

Why not try out the Chinese way to analyze what has been given as ‘truth’ and avoid the risk falling into the trap of ‘One stick knocking down the whole village’. Don’t you think it is a great injustice to deny the work of many good people from the village who has silently contributed to make our lives better today?

by: Bintang Bulan

Human being, pig or fool?

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their side of the question.”

Watching the poor performances of the Yang Berhormats in the hallowed Dewan Rakyat and our pitiful mainstream newspapers, which of the above best reflect on each of our Members of Parliament and members of the esteemed Malaysia cabinet ministers?

BN and PR lost. Ku Li won Galas by-election

For those Malaysians easily drunk on ‘victory’, for the politically uninitiated and for those who thought they know real politiks.

Barisan Nasional component parties have looooong way to go to regain back lost gound prior 308. This is not a time to celebrate, act cocky or thumping of chests. It is not even a victory for them cybertroopers who have no inkling of political ideology in their tweet little universe.

Suffering Pakatan Rakyat and its components PKR, PAS, DAP, have a looooong way to go to reach Putrajaya.

Therefore, to all Malaysia political parties from opposite divides, please go back dutifully to the drawing board and conduct many more cadre trainings for your party members.

Don’t you dare serve us anymore under-qualified or puppet candidates in the next General Election.