Screenshots

Kali: Hey, you got report the old man's story today har?

Wong: No. Kenapa, tak percaya kah? I tot we all agreed on that?

Kali: Eh, I surfed your website around 8 a.m. something, it was there wat!

Wong: Haiya, remove liao lor. You also never put, I go and put har? Takut lar!

Kali: Eh, got peeple managed to capture the story or not. Nanti you big trouble!

Wong: Haiya, you mean blogger pricks har. Nobody will read their blogs one har. They all 'gomen bashing' and 'unpatriotic' only.

Kali: Ok har, this story, you know, I know, enough lar...

wah! this is better than CSI....

u expect those primetime media to know about internet? ..

u can use Google Search and u can find that link there too...

Signs of Stress
Why is former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad taking swipes at his successor? It may be because Malaysia's cozy consensus is beginning to unravel.

Newsweek International
July 3-10, 2006 issue - Ungrateful" and "gutless." Those are some of the harsh words used by former Malaysian strongman Mahathir Mohamad to describe the government led by his successor, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi. "I have helped many people [into power]," he told reporters, "only for them to stab me in the back." What prompted such wrath? Since taking office in 2003, Abdullah has abandoned a string of his former mentor's initiatives, including a planned bridge to Singapore and the special status of the national car program—moves that Abdullah backers see as an attempt to tackle Malaysia's deeply rooted crony capitalism. "A small crack has opened in the democratic space," says Anwar Ibrahim, a former Mahathir deputy who was purged and spent six years in prison before his release in 2004. "It should therefore come as no surprise that these shady deals are unraveling before our eyes."

What's also unraveling is the cozy consensus that Malaysia's ruling elite has struggled for decades to maintain. A factional struggle is developing over control of the ruling United National Malay Organization, or UMNO. On one side are Mahathir and his loyalists, who helped develop Malaysia with state-driven economic policies—manifest in the New Economic Plan (NEP), which favors the indigenous Malay population. On the other side is Abdullah and his political supporters, who want to battle corruption and modernize an economy that, even buoyed by oil, has been growing at a rather sluggish 5 percent annual rate over the past few years. They concede they have not kept up with the reform pledges made during the 2004 general elections but also insist they are not anti-Mahathir.

Meantime, Malaysia's vigorously cultivated reputation as harmonious melting pot is under considerable stress. Chinese and Indian minorities comprise some 45 percent of the Malaysian population, yet they remain shut out from the Malay-dominated political mainstream. From their perspective, the leadership struggle is merely about which faction will control the contracts, jobs and other perks earmarked for ethnic Malays under the NEP. Decades of institutionalized bias have embittered minorities, warns Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a constitutional-law attorney. Racial polarization, he asserts, is at its "worst point" since the period just after the race riots of 1969.

Abdullah entered office by declaring himself "the prime minister for all Malaysians." But he's presided over a period of resurgent Malay nationalism, shot through with Islamic overtones. At a recent national meeting of Muslim preachers, participants roundly condemned pluralism and called for a government review of a policy that encourages citizens to attend the festivals of other religious and ethnic groups. "There's the misperception that this is the land of moderate Islam," says Aloysius Mowe, a Kuala Lumpur-based Islamic scholar. In May, Muslim mobs broke up a forum being held on Penang Island to discuss religious pluralism and constitutional protection for minority religious rights. Forum organizers said the message was clear: attempts to equate other religions with Islam in Malaysia will be met with violence. Malay politicians routinely make veiled references to a possible reprise of rioting if minority parties are perceived to be gaining too much strength.

The NEP, which was put in place following the 1969 riots, lifted millions of Malays out of poverty and helped create an urban Malay middle class. But NEP critics say the program has since become a mere political tool for UMNO—opening the door for bribes and kickbacks—and may be undermining the country's global economic competitiveness. Under the program government contracts routinely go to Malay companies, and most senior-management positions in state-owned firms are held by Malays. What's more, most listed companies must have a 30 percent Malay partner. Analysts say this is a big part of the reason why foreign investment in Malaysia has been modest ($3.3 billion in 2005). "The model is a fraud," says John Pang, a visiting fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur.

That's why Abdullah's latest five-year economic plan disappointed many economists. Instead of rolling back the NEP, it preserves several discriminatory economic policies through at least 2020. "It had become quite obvious even during the end of Mahathir's tenure that affirmative action was not something that was propelling [Malays] forward but was holding them back and was in fact creating interracial problems," says Malaysian economist Terrence Gomez, who is also director of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva. "Unless [they] learn to be more competitive I can't see how Malays can establish a strong entrepreneurial class."

By some accounts, Abdullah would like to chip away at the Malay-first system. In April he announced the hiring of an anti-corruption czar—and his government is instituting new rules for government contracts and state-owned companies. There have been promises of a move to open government tender contracts but nothing has happened yet. But there's a growing sense among some analysts that the technocratic prime minister lacks the charisma and Mahathir-like force of will to clean up the gravy train that is the NEP. "Any politician who tries to change it would be crushed," says attorney and political observer Philip Koh Tong Ngee. A Western diplomat, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of his comments, adds that "it's very difficult to bring about meaningful change. We have a government which is trying to behave like it was newly elected from the opposition, like there was a seismic voter shift. But in fact, the cabinet lineup is nearly the same, the senior civil servants are the same, the party is still the same."

For starters, UMNO counts the Malay business owners to whom it grants sweetheart contracts as its bedrock supporters. That means political patronage is entrenched and calls for greater support for Malays have strong voter appeal. Even today, some UMNO politicians argue that new economic sectors such as biotechnology should be declared Malay only. Others point out that Malays remain the country's poorest ethnic group. "The fear is that when we declare ourselves a developed country by 2020, the Malays will not be part of that," says Khairy Jamaluddin, a senior member of UMNO's youth wing and the prime minister's son-in-law. "We see [the NEP] as a last chance to get there."

That may be wishful thinking. Chinese and Indian professionals have been emigrating to Singapore, Australia and elsewhere to escape discrimination or dead-end careers. Government officials say they're concerned about losing talent, but that maintaining an economic advantage for Malays is more important. "It's policies like NEP that have been able to preserve the peace," says Khairy. Or, some would say, disturb it.

JeffOoi: "We are just wondering if Malaysia under the Abdullah Administration is any more transparent, and if media freedom is any more effervescent compared to the Mahathir era."

___________

Who is we? Anyway, to me, whether or not newspapers carry Mahathir's views is irrelevant. What's more important is that newspapers can carry debates/opinions/features over Kongsi Raya, Article 11, Moorthy's body snatching, Jacqueline Ann Surin's Open Letter to the PM and debates over Lelaki Komunis Terakhir without another Ops Lalang.

Is KK the Oxford / Cambridge guy from tingkat 4?

Jeff, I read that piece in The Sunday Star web version yesterday....so do I get a prize for that? Maybe teh tarik!!? And oh, mine is teh si kosong halia tarik o.k.!

so does that mean if more of us come out here to admit reading it in The Star, Star's licence might be suspended? Hey, that would be great isn't it? After all the news they publish is crap.

theSun reported it today (26th June). Check out pg. 11. The budak hingusan was not directly mentioned. Only 'the group of special young assistants working for Abdullah' and 'SIL' were mentioned.

Encik Kamal Khalid
(35 years of age - Malaysian)

Independent Non-Executive Director. Joined the Board of Utusan Melayu (Malaysia) Berhad on 17 June 2004.

Graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (Honours), University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. Formerly was the Special Officer to the then Deputy Prime Minister and has held various positions in the corporate sector such as International Affairs Manager, Bursa Malaysia Berhad and Assistant Manager, Group Finance, Southern Bank Berhad.

Currently is the Head of Communications Unit of The Prime Minister's Office.

January 5, 2005
By FRANCIS DASS
New Straits Times

First World. Third World. The transparency or the opacity associated with them and the value of an individual’s worth to the larger collective — these are all just the products of the state of people’s minds. However, the US-based Eisenhower Fellowships promises to haul up everyone to First World status sooner or later.

TALKING to the two Eisenhower fellows proved to be a priceless study in contrast. He was initially reluctant to reveal his age; she had no problems telling it. He wanted the specifics of his job kept secret and described in a general manner; she was absolutely forthcoming about who she worked for. He was cautious, but she was totally candid.

He is Kamal Khalid, 33, and “works for the Government of Malaysia.” She is 47-year-old Rosalind Fuse-Hall, executive assistant to the Chancellor of North Carolina Central University in the US.

Talking to Kamal, it is easy to see what the Eisenhower Fellowships selection committee must have seen — a potential to grow and evolve beyond what the sum of his parts might presently amount to. And the sum is, after all, already a very successful young man by any measure.

Born in Petaling Jaya, he studied in a “boarding school in Muar, Johor” before going off to do a degree in the UK. An insistent prompt from the writer begets the details: he studied law at the University of Nottingham.

Kamal applied for the fellowship in 2003 after being approached by one of the Malaysian fellows, who asked if he was interested in applying to become an Eisenhower fellow. Kamal sent in the application to the nomination committee and didn’t think much of it until he was notified that he’d been selected some time in July/August last year.

When asked what he thought about the US and its place in the global scheme of things — pre and post- the tragedy of Sept 11, 2001 (9/11), Kamal said: “I think the US has always been unavoidably relevant to the rest of the world. It is the sole surviving superpower. And the US produces things that affect us in our daily life. It has a large influence in what we do.

“Post 9/11, I think it (the destruction of the World Trade Centre’s Twin Towers in New York) has removed any restraint that the US might have had in throwing its weight around. “The defining characteristics of the US is that it does things in the interest of its people, and it doesn’t care what other people think as it goes about achieving this.”

As for President George W. Bush, Kamal said “this is Bush’s era”.

“Obviously, he is a man who has implemented policies that have garnered support from the American people. He must be doing something that is reflective of what the American
people want.” The young man also made a rational assessment of the Malaysia-US ties, saying that relationship between the two countries has been characterised by two things.

“First, there is the official bilateral relationship. Then, here is the broader relationship that ties up education, trade and other things like tourism.

“The second aspect is very strong as Malaysian students continue going to the US to further their studies, American ompanies continue to invest in Malaysia and bi-directional tourism between the two countries is still going strong.” As for his eight-week fellowship visit to the US which will begin in March, Kamal is approaching it calmly.

“I’m trying to go with an open mind. I have been very happy and touched by the warmth shown to me by the (Malaysian) fellows, who have been very encouraging. They have told me what to expect. I’m very keen to see what are the views of the man on the street in the US on many things.”

However, Kamal refused to divulge the identities of the Malaysian fellows whom he has been in contact with.

The interesting thing about Kamal and the Eisenhower Fellowships is his age. The website (www.eef.org) clearly states that the fellowship prefers its fellows to be in the age range of between 35 and 42, and those outside of this age group will be only considered after “they have been scrutinised more closely to ensure that other key selection criteria are met to an exceptional degree”.

His occasional sheepish wavering aside, Kamal appears to be a perfect fit for a criteria spelt out on the website, which is his demonstration of “a potential for advanced leadership and societal impact through influence on key policies or important operational areas, as evidenced by the individual’s prior career progression and personal attributes”.

On the other hand, at the top end of the age group is the equally exceptional Fuse-Hall. Born in Atlanta, Georgia in the US, the bubbly woman has visited three Southeast Asian countries as part of her eight-week Eisenhower Fellowships tour-of-duty. She has been to Thailand for four weeks, Singapore (two weeks) and is now on the last leg of her tour in Malaysia.

“I’m here to study higher education, research and private partnership. I’m also interested in the multi-cultural existence and how people here live and work together,” she said.

“I have learnt a lot about Southeast Asian culture, values, educational systems and how they conduct business. I also hope to talk to colleagues in biotechnology about a comprehensive strategic planning in biotechnology that we need to do in the US.”

The whole endeavour had left her impressed, Fuse-Hall said.

“When I return to the US, I will share with my colleagues about the possibilities of partnerships and research in this part of the world as well as discuss student and faculty exchanges.”

She had visited the Technology Park Malaysia, Multimedia University and the Multimedia Development Corporation’s head office.

Is this the said KK?

http://www.pmo.gov.my/website/webdb.nsf/vALLDOC/EAD0F657CBD87AF44825707C002B135B