Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Umno Sudah Kehabisan Modal, Sedang Beralih Ke Zaman Jahiliah

Umno sudah kehabisan modal. Oleh kerana mereka telah kehabisan modal, Umno sehingga kini masih lagi tidak berani untuk mengumumkan pembubaran parlimen. Kata mereka, Umno dan Barisan Nasional (BN) begitu yakin sekali akan dapat mencapai kemenangan besar di dalam pilihanraya umum (PRU13) yang akan datang, tetapi mereka pula yang asyik menunda pembubaran parlimen.

Ya, Umno sudah pun ketandusan modal. Mereka ini sudah ketandusan segala-gala kebaikan yang ada padanya sehinggakan mereka terpaksa menggunakan agenda-agenda yang melibatkan keganasan, perkauman dan yang paling terbaru pornografi (adegan atau lakonan seks dalam video).

Selaku rakyat Malaysia, ianya sememangnya menyedihkan kita kerana di dalam negara ini terdapat sebuah parti politik yang telah berkuasa lebih daripada lima puluh lima tahun sanggup melakukan perkara-perkara yang keji ini demi untuk mengekalkan kuasanya. Apakah parti tersebut sudah tidak ada lagi dasar-dasar yang dapat diketengahkan kepada rakyat dan negara, sehinggakan agenda-agenda keganasan, perkauman dan pornografi terpaksa digunakan pada saat-saat yang sebegini.

Sudah lupakah Umno, bahawa negara kita yang di sebut Malaysia ini mempunyai pelbagai kaum, kebudayaan dan agama yang sangat menitikberatkan budaya-budaya dan tingkahlaku yang sopan santun, serta perlakuan modal yang beradat serta bertamadun?

Jika sekiranya Umno itu masih mendakwa diri mereka ini sebagai pejuang tunggal hak-hak orang-orang Melayu dan agama Islam, halal tak jika parti tersebut asyik memain-mainkan keganasan, sentimen perkauman dan penayangan filem atau video yang berunsurkan seks bebas? Adakah kesemua bentuk perlakuan ini seiiring dengan apa Umno perjuangkan selama ini?

Apa yang Umno sedang lakukan sekarang ini bukannya untuk memperjuang atau mempertahankan hak-hak keistimewaan orang-orang Melayu dan agama Islam pada amnya, tetapi sebaliknya apa yang mereka sedang lakukan ini kesemuanya akan merosakkan masyarakat yang kononnya mereka wakili dan fahaman agama yang mereka dakwa pertahankan selama ini.

Kita tengoklah masyarakat yang Umno asyik mendakwa telah mempertahankannya selama lebih daripada lima puluh lima tahun lamanya, apa yang sudah terjadi? Masyarakat tersebut pada majoritinya masih mundur dan tidak mendapat bekalan asas seperti elektrik, air dan jalanraya yang sempurna di kawasan-kawasan penempatan mereka, kadar jenayah dalam negara ini semakin meningkat dan ini pun majoritinya datang daripada masyarakat tersebut, keruntuhan akhlah dan moral, salahlaku seks, berkembangnya gejala mat rempit, samseng jalanan dan apajua yang bertentangan dengan agama turut datangnya daripada masyarakat tersebut.

Jadi, apa yang Umno telah dan sedang buat di dalam usaha menangani masalah tersebut? Tidak ada sebenarnya, sebaliknya Umno telah mempergunakan golongan yang telah runtuh akhlak dan moral mereka untuk membantu melakukan keganasan politik bagi menentang lawannya, iaitu parti-parti pembangkang dengan melabelkan kesemua mereka ini dengan pelbagai nama-nama NGO agar Umno tidak diheret ke dalam kancah tersebut apabila terjadinya sesuatu yang tidak diingini.

Mungkin ramai di antara kita masih tidak tahu, akan tetapi Tuhan dan Allah s.w.t. sedang memerhati segala tindak-tanduk manusia di bumi ini dan akan memastikan mereka-mereka yang bersalah itu menerima hukuman yang setimpal di suatu hari nanti.

Sudah cukuplah dengan tempoh selama lima puluh lima tahun ini. Sepatutnya negara ini akan maju ke hadapan, akan tetapi, apa yang Umno sedang lakukan ini akan membawa negara kita kembali ke zaman Jahiliah. Jahiliah itu bermaksud, sesebuah negara atau masyarakat yang sangat mundur dari segi akhlak dan sosial.

Baiklah kita usahakan perubahan untuk negara dan generasi kita yang akan datang sekarang daripada memikirkan apakah yang akan berlaku sekiranya sebuah kerajaan baru dibentuk. Fikirkanlah akibatnya, jika Umno terus diberikan "mandat". Kepentingan negara kita perlu diutamakan.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Shadow Cabinet in Malaysia. Are there any legitimacy?

Where is your Shadow Cabinet to prove your ability in governance? This is the question which is usually demanded by leaders of the Barisan Nasional (BN) to challenge the Opposition front Pakatan Rakyat (Pakatan) to prove their ability to work together (PKR, DAP and PAS) to govern this nation should they were to takeover Putrajaya after the 13th general elections (GE13).

First of all, let us all ask the BN leaders and ourselves before we jump into some sort of conclusion or being influenced by what is being mentioned by all those BN leaders. Are the institution of an Official Opposition Front Bench and the establishment of a Shadow Cabinet being recognized in our nation? Does the Federal Constitution states that such institutions for the Opposition must be established? Or are there any provisions in any laws in this country which stated that the Shadow Cabinet would be recognized and shall work equally with the government of the day to provide various check and balance?

The answers to the above questions and highlights are No. There are not even a single provision within any laws or the Federal Constitution in this country that allows the Official Opposition Front Bench to be recognized and the institutionalization of a Shadow Cabinet to provide checks on the government of the day.

In this case, are those BN leaders really sincere in wanting the Shadow Cabinet to be established at the Opposition side? Are those BN leaders aware that there are no provisions in any law nor the Federal Constitution that could recognize the Opposition's institution within the parliamentary and governance system in this country? If these BN leaders are well aware of the current situation and yet still talk cheap on this subject, we would regard their words as a mere politics of hate and to discredit their opponents as much as possible. In fact they are not sincere at all when talking about democracy in our nation.

And when Pakatan has decided to reveal the kind of Opposition Front Bench Committees which consist of three to four representatives (PKR, DAP and PAS) in each portfolios to oversee their counterparts in the Putrajaya administration, these BN leaders immediately attack the Pakatan leadership on their line-up by accusing them of disunity within the opposition coalition and the later also could not agree on the allocation of the cabinet portfolios to their component party representatives.

So, why are the BN leaders picking at the Pakatan leadership on the question of Shadow Cabinet when they knew that a proper institution for the Opposition bench has never been exist at all via any law or the Federal Constitution.

Just look at how the opposition parties in other countries work. We can look at the clear examples in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Thailand, Japan and United Kingdom. In these countries, the opposition parties elected to their respective national legislations are recognized as Official Opposition or Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. In this status, the members of the Opposition bench in these countries are given due recognition equally to that of the government of the day. The Leader of the Opposition in these countries sits and stands on the same status with that of the Prime Minister of the sitting government and as an Opposition leader, he or she is authorized to officially establish the Shadow Cabinet to provide check and balance on the government of the day's administrations, policies and implementations.

Asides being officially recognized, the Shadow Cabinet in these countries are also being allocated a portion of the government funding in order to allow the shadow cabinet ministers and their team to work on various research work, public reviews, to have offices within their establishment and to seek many kinds of cooperation with the government ministries, departments and agencies to check and view on approvals, projects, policies and implementations which has been carried out by the government and their ministers.

We would like to ask the BN leaders, do we have all those facilities here for the Official Opposition in Malaysia? First of all, only the position of the Opposition Leader is being recognized and there are no mention that his Shadow Cabinet would also be recognize as an official status equal to that of the BN government ministries. Apart from this, Opposition Leader is only given a small token of allowance, there the fact that is there are even no allocation being provided to the Opposition members of parliament (MP).

The annual allocation are instead channel to the Fake MPs (defeated BN candidates of the currently Opposition-held constituencies) who are functioning as Constituency Coordinators working under the direct jurisdiction of the Implementation and Coordination Unit (ICU) of the Prime Minister's Department.

So, since the Oppostion MPs are being systematically denied their annual allocations and grants by the BN government, how can we all expect an unrecognized institution of Shadow Cabinet to exist and function effectively like their counterparts in other countries?

In fact, having the Opposition Front Bench Committees which consist of three to four representatives in each cabinet portfolios are already some kind of initiatives being carried out by the Pakatan leadership knowing that they will not be given any funding or allocation by the government to carry out their duties and responsibilities for the people and our nation. In doing this they will have to depend on donations from our people and other well wishers in order to get their jobs done.

Besides, Pakatan component parties have also resort to establishing their own public-funded think tank institutes in order to support their MPs and state assemblymen in carrying out their policy research and reviews. The privately owned think tanks established are the Institut Rakyat (PKR), Research for Social Advancement (DAP) and the Pusat Penyelidikan PAS (PAS).

We are pushing this buck back to the ruling BN. Where is the legitimacy of the Opposition bench in the parliament? Are there any equal recognition for the Opposition bench in this country? If you are sincere in wanting the Opposition bench to have an upright Shadow Cabinet, why are you not initiating any measures to amend the Federal Constitution or to enact any proper laws to provide due recognition to the Opposition bench and to allow them to enjoy the various annual allocations and grants for their constituencies?

For what you have been doing onto the Opposition, do you think this is real democracy? Are there any parliamentary democracy in the parliament itself? Are the Opposition MPs being provided with sufficient facilities to allow them to carry out their responsibilities as MPs and representatives of our people?

If the BN leaders couldn't do anything to improve the democracy of this institution, they should then cease all their empty talks immediately.

Reform the Parliamentary System as well!

Besides having the need to reform the entire government machinery in order to reflect its professionalism and making it into a service-oriented corporation, the Parliamentary System in this country ought to undergo the reform as well.

As we can see, eventhough our country is practicing parliamentary democracy, our nation's parliament does not seem to be functioning as it was supposed to be. Yes, there are loopholes, a lot of loopholes in the current parliamentary system. People has been commenting that Malaysia is adopting a rubber-stamped parliamentary system which is only task to proposed and approve laws. Which means, the political parties who hold the majority number of seats in the parliament shall always be a winner and limited debates are only allowed in order to provide some "democratic avenue" to the Opposition bench to provide their views.

This is correct, having an absolute majority and having always got the powers to approve and amend laws or bills does not necessarily demonstrate that our parliamentary system is sound and democratic. It is insufficient. In a democratic parliamentary system, there are more to be demonstrated in order to show to the people the transparent way of policies being decide and not dictate.

Tabling of laws and bills

When a governing party intends to table a law or bill in the parliament, the method which has been carried out were, having those books or paperwork being published and then distributed them to respective members of parliament by just putting at each of the parliamentarians' sitting positions' desks. At times, these proposed laws and bills are provided earlier but sometimes there are only provided at the last minute.

For example, the Peaceful Assembly Act, the amendments of the University and University Colleges Act (UUCA), Election Offences Act, Security Offences Act and so on were done in a rush prompting many members of parliament to complain that they do not even have the sufficient time to review and to prepare their feedbacks on those proposed laws and bills. In the end those laws and bill are simply being approved by hand-vote of majority from the ruling party's bench. So, are such practices called democracy when members of parliament are simply not been given the sufficient time to review and debate on those subject prior to the approval in parliament? This means, the law was not collectively approved but instead it was approved simply because the majority said so.

This is call, limited democracy.

Parliamentary Select Committees

As at today, the practice of establishing a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) was only being carried out whenever there are mounted pressures from certain parties or groups to make an issue into that of public interests or to bring up some matters to the attention of the parliament, such as cleaning up the electoral rolls currently being managed by the Election Commission (EC) and the Lynas Advance Material Plant (LAMP) project in Pahang.

Right now, there is only one permanent PSC overseeing the accounting and audits onto the government ministries, departments and agencies, which is called the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). The other parliamentary-based committees which are ineffective or even inactive which are still functioning only in name only, are the Selection Committee, Standing Orders Committee, House Committee and Privileges Committee.

There are no other PSC which were supposed to be formed to oversee the various government ministries, departments and agencies, to scrutinize the appointment of government officials, proposed policies, proposed laws and bills and so on.

Just look at the other countries around us, take the nearest, Thailand and The Philippines, these two countries' parliament do have sufficient numbers of select committees to oversee the ministries and departments respectively.

When we have such PSC to oversee the performance of various ministries and departments, to scrutinize the appointment of its officials and to seek their commitments on their standards and ethics, only then the many problems and mismanagement as well as the bureaucratic within the government would be able to be reduced, thus promoting and enhancing a more professional nature in the government machinery to reflect it as people or service oriented organization readily to seek and serve.

We could see now, there are a lots of unnecessary or unaudited procurement of under-quality weaponry system, submarines, naval patrol vessels or any other defense equipment by the defense ministry if continue to be left unchecked, would lead our entire nation open to external threat. As such, there should be a PSC for Armed Services to vet and scrutinize the various activities and expenditures undertaken by the defense ministry in order to ensure our nation is readily prepared in its line of defense should any threat arise.

Now coming to the number of death in police custody, corruption and power abuse within the police force, RELA and so on. These agencies are under the jurisdiction of the home affairs ministry which is responsible of maintaining the security and public order of our nation. Then, a PSC on Public Security should be established to provide a check and balance onto what is happening in its various security agencies. From time to time the PSC would then summon the inspector-general of police or the director-general of RELA for some sort of parliamentary hearing in order to ensure things and security measures are in proper order.

Then, other important PSCs which should be established are Housing and Local Government; Health; Education; Finance; Transport; Communications; Trade and Industry; Agricultural; Human Resources; Foreign Affairs; Youth and Sports; Public Works and so on. What we are trying to elaborate here is the number of PSCs should be established in accordance to the number of portfolios or combined portfolios of ministries that the government has.

Malaysian Anti Corruption Agency (MACC) and Election Commission (EC)

Other than PSCs for ministerial portfolios, PSCs should also be established to oversee the sensitive agencies such as the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC) and the Election Commissions (EC) in order to ensure the effectiveness of these two organization in discharging their duties and responsibilities for the people and the nation.

Currently, both MACC and EC are under the direct jurisdiction of the Prime Minister's Department when they are supposed to be under the direct jurisdiction of and answerable to the parliament. By doing this only the people would be able to cast away their doubts on the actual impartiality of these two important agencies tasked in combating corruption and the running of general elections respectively.

Reform to Modernize, not Westernize

In many occasions, the Barisan Nasional (BN), particularly the dominant component party, Umno likes to compare modernization with westernization. Actually, these two words have complete two different meaning. Umno likes to confuse people on the Opposition's reform agenda with bringing in western methods which would undermine the ethnicity, culture and the religions in this country.

Whatever they label as westernization are wrong. Reform is not the purpose to westernize but to modernize. In gearing up our nation for the next phase, it is important that the government and businesses seeks for modernization in order to improve their service and efficiencies.

Just look at these countries, like New Zealand, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Korea, Japan and even The Philippines, their parliaments, national legislative assemblies or congress do consist of so many portfolio-based select committees to oversee their governments' day to day administrations and activities and to ensure running of these departments and agencies are free from both political interference or influences thus promoting professional and effective service to their people at large.

That why, when you see the ruling parties of these countries change more frequently then ours, these nations are still running effectively and there are not much impact at all on these countries' economy and businesses. It is because the civil service sectors has been fully impartial and professional in discharging their responsibilities to the people and the nation irrespective of any political presence.

This is only a short commentary and proposal on how to reform and modernize our nation's parliamentary system, there are lot more to do in order to enhance the other parts within the system. In doing this, we need to seek some good examples as reference.

For those who wanted to further understand the definition of this commentary and proposal, you may log into the government websites of those countries which we had mentioned herein.

Who Will Eradicate Corruption, then?

According to Dr Chandra Muzaffar, the chairman of the Yayasan 1Malaysia, who is also the former PKR deputy president, changing the government in this country would not solve the problems of corruption within the nation's establishment.

Asides, Dr Chandra also mentioned that not only is BN corrupt but the opposition Pakatan Rakyat is also corrupt in its administrations and politics. It shows that Dr Chandra is not only narrow minded when making such statement but he is not looking at the broader prospect of the proposal made by Pakatan Rakyat in its recently released electoral manifesto.

So, does Dr Chandra mean, since Pakatan Rakyat is also corrupt, why not let BN who is "totally corrupt" to continue governing this nation so that these BN leaders could squander more in billions of Ringgit from our people? In this subject, where does Dr Chandra looking at? It looks like he looks forward for our nation to fall backwards instead of moving forward.

Yes, Dr Chandra maybe right in his thought and we will rate him 70 percent, for now. We agree that whoever is in power would become corrupt because of the materialistic nature of these politicians, especially those who has been in power for decades continuously. The fact here is, BN has already been in power for more than 55 years, while the opposition Pakatan Rakyat had just started to taste the corridor of power in March 2008 when they managed to wrest power in the states of Kedah, Perak, Penang, Selangor and Kelantan.

Let us come back to the case of Dr Chandra's word, "Pakatan Rakyat is also corrupt". Let us help Dr Chandra to understand the entire situation. Combating corruption, be it whether BN or Pakatan Rakyat is in Putrajaya would not be easy, but at least, Pakatan Rakyat leaders has the strong political will to present their effort to our people that they had undertook to combat this negative element in their Common Policy Framework and their recently released Electoral Manifesto. And this is Pakatan Rakyat's strongest political will to combat corruption.

So, Dr Chandra, where is BN's political will in combating corruption? BN has been in power for more than 55 years now. First, the Anti Corruption Agency (ACA), then it was upgraded to Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC), even then, until today, these previous and current entities are both under the Prime Minister's Department when the commission-based MACC was supposed to be under the jurisdiction of the parliament.

Since the MACC is still under the jurisdiction of the Prime Minister's Department, can we see any clear independence and impartiality of MACC in its effort to eradicate corruption? Why are all those most corrupted politicians in the BN are still in their powerful seats despite so many exposure on their wrongdoings and their millions of Ringgit in fortune which are all doubtful.

Under BN, only those small fries as well as unimportant personalities and leaders with least power within the party and administration are being charged and convicted for corruptions. Most of these so-called convicted ones were merely scapegoats standing out for their big bosses up there.

So, Dr Chandra again, is this call political will on the BN side? Why is MACC until today still being labelled as ineffective in its role in combating corruption? Why are people still having so many negative impression on the MACC until today, despite so many efforts being carried out by the later. Efforts are only educating the public on corruption. What is very weak and ineffective now are on the Enforcement and Prosecution side of the MACC, of which the BN government had until today refused to grant these powers to the MACC.

In this case, Dr Chandra, the BN government has no political will at all in combating corruption. In the lay person's point of view, the BN is not serious in this effort at all. The have created all sorts of transformation programme here and there, making so many announcements and luxurious launching, but in carrying out these efforts, these BN leaders are half-hearted.

Then, does Dr Chandra still wants the monster to remain in control of our nation just because the cat has eaten a teaspoon of sugar? Just think about it. Use your wisdom please!