J. D. Lovrenciear
And now the greatest leader and visionary politician of all times, the very Bapa Modern Malaysia has spoken – that Malaysians are not mature (immature or never matured in the first place) and therefore it is no point having debates.
Malaysians have been judged. Malaysians have been labeled. Malaysians have been banished into a corner for according to the great Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysians are short of being called retarded, not mature.
Well he must be right after all. Why not?
Retarded
Look at the University and College Act that he bulldozed through. Has this Act not been the cause of our youths retardation over the years?
Look at the education system. Are we still not sinking with a policy and system that is unable to bring out the best in our youth after all these years? The benchmark is very simple: For as long as you need to put your kids through tuition class despite more than six hours daily in school, it is true that the system is a failure.
Look at the internal security act and the official secrets act. Are we not made to be stupid buffoons by keeping all public concerns under wraps and also punishing those who dared to probe, question or spring little leaks here and there?
Or just take an inventory of the media statements that keeping popping out like breaking news made by our politicians. Don’t these hint immaturity?
Insulting
The very statement made by the great Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad hurts and hurts deeply. Which politician or ex-statesman in the world has ever lambasted his voters and citizens with such insult by labeling them all as “immature”? Who? Anyone out there who said so and got away scot free?
In insulting Malaysians has the Tun also not then insulted King, Prime Minister and nation? No? Then what is a nation all about?
Well at least we know that here in Malaysia a leader who held the helm for 22 years can say what he likes and dislikes and yet we will sweetly smile with oblivion. Yes we must be immature after all.
Immature not because we are; but more so because we were all programmed to be so after all these 22 years. Right or wrong?
Made a mockery of the law, education, race relations. Robbed the country. Still robbing.
Comment by kay — February 23, 2012 @ 8:31 PM |
Made a mockery of the law, a mockery of race relations, a mockery of education, robbed the country together with cronies. Still robbing!!!
Comment by kay — February 23, 2012 @ 8:28 PM |
The sooner this devil kick the bucket the better … if possible just send him back to where he belong …hell
Comment by Tiger YK — February 23, 2012 @ 3:24 PM |
Chinese biggest taxpayers: Dr M
Malays have to acknowledge that they contributed the least to making Malaysia a model country
The Sun, Monday 27-03-2006
FORMER prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad does not mince his words when he says that if Malaysia depended only on taxes paid by the Malays, it would not have achieved what it has today, the Chinese press reported yesterday. He said Malays have to acknowledge that the Malay community contributed the least to making Malaysia a model country and to its current status in the world.
Addressing a forum on the Future Challenges of the Malays organised by the Kedah Malay Assembly Hall in Alor Star on Saturday, Mahathir said there is no doubt the country has progressed and prospered under the leadership of the Malays but that such progress was built on the hard work of other races.
“The government used taxes from the people to develop the country, but who contributed the most in taxes? “The Chinese! Their success in business has made them the biggest contributors in taxes.” He said Malays are behind the others not because they are inferior or lack resources but because of their culture and attitude. He urged them to stress on the pursuit of knowledge.
Mahathir also warned that the New Automotive Policy would be the undoing of Proton, which has suffered setbacks previously. “Proton is destined to fail,” he told reporters later when asked to comment on the policy announced last week. Asked to elaborate, he said: “What more is there to say?”
Comment by Kamus — February 23, 2012 @ 1:14 PM |
Mahathir criticises Malay community
BBC News, 16th June 2002
The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, has launched a strong attack on the majority Malay community, saying it had failed to make real progress despite being given special privileges for more than 30 years.
In a newspaper interview ahead of a five-day meeting of his party the United Malays National Organisation or Umno, Dr Mahathir criticised Malays for being too complacent and unwilling to work hard.
He said that after more than 20 years in office he had failed to change what he called this culture of extravagance.
Malays make up more than half of the 23 million population but receive special privileges because the Chinese minority is seen as having disproportionate wealth.
_______________
Mahathir warns Malays to brace for end to privileges
Kyodo News International, 20th June 2002
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Thursday defended his country’s affirmative action policy but warned ethnic Malays that their rights and privileges are ”far from being safe.”
”The Malays are clearly far from being safe. Do not think that the power of the Malays in the political arena is permanent, that it will guarantee the safety of the Malays forever,” the 76-year-old premier said in a two-hour speech to open the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) annual assembly.
If the special status of the Malays, or ”bumiputeras” as they are also known, is challenged today, he said, Malays will not be able to survive.
”They are not prepared to face any competition at all. They are so afraid of the other communities. Without the experience of competing with others, if the protection is suddenly withdrawn, they will not be able to survive,” Mahathir, also UMNO president, said.
As head of the party that deems itself the custodian of Malay culture, Mahathir put his newly gained political fortune on the line recently when he dared to pry open the three-decade-old New Economic Policy (NEP) to provide more opportunities for non-Malays, although only in education.
The NEP, Malaysia’s affirmative action policy, guarantees Malays 30% corporate equity, easy credit, contracts and projects from the government and places in public universities.
The policy, which came about following the 1969 clashes between the poorer, rural Malays and the economically more dominant ethnic Chinese, is now called the National Vision Policy.
Recently Mahathir stirred up a controversy by changing the race-based quota system for university entrance to a merit-based one. Then he ordered 10% of places to be allocated to non-Malays in government-run colleges and that English, instead of the national language, Malay, be used to teach science and mathematics.
Malay nationalists are up in arms crying treachery. But Mahathir is adamant, saying the NEP has made Malays ”lazy” and prone to rely on ”the easy way and the quick way.”
”Because of that, when licenses are given, they sell the licenses…No work is done other than to be close to people with influence and authority in order to get something because they are Malays,” he told the 2,000 delegates attending the three-day assembly.
”Truly I am ashamed to expose all these, especially in front of the other people, in front of the whole nation and the world. But they all already know all these. I am not exposing anything that they don’t know,” he said.
Mahathir expressed his disappointment that after 21 years at the helm of the country he has failed to change the Malay mindset.
”Mostly I feel disappointed, disappointed because I achieved too little result from my principal task — the task of making my race a successful race, a race that is respected, a race that is honorable, a race that is highly regarded. I beg your pardon because I have failed,” he said.
But despite his criticism of Malays and their over-dependence on government assistance, Mahathir defended the benefits of the NEP although he said it has slowed down national development.
”What slowed down the national development was because the government had to try and try again to balance the economy of the Malays against that of the non-Malays at all levels and in all fields,” he said.
But the NEP, he said, has succeeded in closing the gap between the Malays and non-Malays.
Those who condemned the NEP, he said, have ignored the fact that government scholarships and opportunities have allowed thousands of Malay children to enter universities.
The government has also provided 3 billion ringgit as capital for the National Equity Corp. to initiate unit trusts which succeeded in making 7.28 million Malays shareholders in big corporations with investments totaling 34.89 billion ringgit.
The shares allocated to the NEC were the result of the restructuring of new companies that are required by the NEP to provide 30% of their equity for bumiputera.
”In truth, without the NEP, the unit trusts and the governmental institutions which were managed on behalf of the Malays, today the NEP would achieve only 2% of the target,” Mahathir said.
Comment by Kamus — February 23, 2012 @ 1:13 PM |
Mahathir vs the Malay Rulers
By HUZIR SULAIMAN, The Star
In the concluding instalment of the three-part series, Ruling the Rulers, our columnist looks at the outcome of Dr Mahathir’s 1983 standoff with the Sultans.
BY October 1983, Malaysians were becoming aware that a constitutional crisis was in full swing. The Constitution (Amendment) Bill 1983 had been passed by both houses of Parliament, but the King, under pressure from his fellow rulers, was refusing to give his Royal Assent to it.
The bill would remove the need for the King to assent to legislation, and would similarly do away with the need for Sultans to assent to State laws. It would also take away the King’s power to declare an Emergency and give it to the Prime Minister.
The Rulers publicly rejected these amendments after a meeting in Selangor on Nov 20, 1983. When the public became aware that a storm was brewing, Dr Mahathir’s administration initiated a propaganda war to put pressure on the Rulers.
There took place a “series of illegal public rallies held by Umno in Alor Star, Bagan Datoh, Seremban, Batu Pahat, Malacca, for the Prime Minister with reports of officially inflated crowd figures?.” as Lim Kit Siang would later describe them in the Dewan Rakyat.
These rallies, staged in order to generate sympathy for the Government’s cause, were illegal in the sense that police permits were neither sought nor granted.
Whether or not the crowd figures were inflated by the Umno-aligned media – it is true that they generally reported these events in positive terms – it is clear that the 1983 rallies were exciting evenings, with republican sentiments on everyone’s minds, if not exactly on their lips. One of the most arresting images in Rais Yatim’s Faces in the Corridor of Power is a photograph of two youths at one such rally. They are wearing T-shirts bearing Dr Mahathir’s picture and the words “DAULAT RAKYAT”.
Although the Prime Minister denied wanting to abolish the monarchy, at these rallies “the historical moment of unfolding Malay nationalism was relived as a continuing battle of Malay popular sovereignty against royal hegemony,” as Khoo Boo Teik writes in Paradoxes of Mahathirism.
At a rally in Alor Star on Nov 26, Dr Mahathir declared that “It was the rakyat who had protested against the Malayan Union after the Second World War; it was the rakyat who wanted a democratic system that would enable them to choose their own leaders. It was always the people who had fought for their destiny.”
At the largest rally, in Batu Pahat, Dr Mahathir told the crowds, in a thinly veiled dig at hereditary rulers, “We weren’t born Ministers ? We’re up here because we were chosen by all of you.”
The propaganda war continued, with tales of royal extravagance and impropriety emerging. The Government leaked the fact that they were compiling dossiers on the Sultans. RTM announced they were preparing a year-long TV series on the Rulers and the Constitution.
Yet pro-royal rallies took place too – especially in Kelantan and Terengganu, where Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah was rumoured to be responsible for them – and they drew large crowds, although they went unreported by the media.
Upping the ante, the Umno Youth executive council called for the Government to gazette the Constitution (Amendment) Bill without waiting for the King’s assent, effectively daring the Rulers to challenge it in court. Dr Mahathir did not immediately adopt this strategy, but held this “nuclear option” in reserve while behind-the-scenes negotiations continued with the Rulers.
Public opinion was divided over the issue. Rural Malays tended to support the Rulers; urban Malays, while not uncritical of Mahathir’s strategies and motives, were more ready to accept egalitarian ideas.
As for the Chinese community, R.S. Milne and Diane K. Mauzy note in Malaysian Politics Under Mahathir that “One might have expected that, since the rulers and the Agung were symbols of ‘Malayness’ the Chinese would feel little loyalty to them. Paradoxically, they were quite pro-royalty, because they did not really trust Malay politicians. Indeed, they viewed the Agung and the rulers as protectors of their vital interests.”
There seemed to be no way out of the impasse except by compromise – which is what happened. The Rulers agreed to the Constitutional (Amendment) Bill 1983 on the condition that many of its provisions were modified or repealed immediately with the introduction of the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 1984.
The new bill, passed in January 1984, meant that the King could now only delay a piece of non-money legislation for a month. It then had to be sent back to Parliament with his objections. If the King still opposed it in the form in which Parliament then passed it, he could only delay it for another month before it was gazetted as law.
The King could therefore only delay legislation for up to two months before it became the law of the land.
But this principle was no longer extended to the State level: Sultans still needed to assent to State bills before they became law, which was an important symbolic victory. Most importantly for those who feared Dr Mahathir’s supposed plan to concentrate power in his own hands, the bill removed the proposed ability of the Prime Minister to declare an Emergency by himself, and restored it to the King.
Nonetheless, Dr Mahathir saw himself as having won, declaring at a victory rally in Malacca that the feudal system had ended. He had brought his theatrical, confrontational, unapologetically antagonistic style to a high-stakes arena and had, by some accounts at least, triumphed over the Malay Rulers.
He quickly moved to consolidate his gains. Stories had been circulating that the head of the army, Jen Tan Sri Mohd Zain Hashim, was opposed to Mahathir’s approach and believed the armed force’s loyalty lay with the Rulers. Mohd Zain took early retirement. This was followed by a reorganisation of the army and some 500 other early retirements and dismissals.
When the independent-minded Sultan of Johor took over as Yang di-Pertuan Agong in 1984, some feared (and some hoped) that royal activism would reassert itself.
As Roger Kershaw writes in Monarchy In South-East Asia: Faces of Tradition in Transition, “From the beginning, the Agong had made no secret of his contempt for Mahathir on the grounds of his mixed blood, calling him, to his face, ‘Mamak’ (a derogatory nickname for those of Indian Muslim ancestry). [?] But Dr Mahathir had proved more than a match for this difficult sovereign. Having got the measure of the King’s essential vanity and exhibitionism, he prudently pandered to it, even to the extent of placing a more convenient Royal Malaysian Airforce helicopter at his permanent disposal?.”
Through this and other measures, Dr Mahathir maintained good relations with the new King, enlisting him in his 1987 move against the judiciary, the effects of which are still felt today.
The Prime Minister’s campaign continued. He silenced the Rulers over the issue of the 1987 ISA detentions; staged a hostile debate on the monarchy in the 1990 Umno general assembly after the loss of Kelantan to PAS; removed the Rulers’ immunity to prosecution following the constitutional crisis of 1992-93; stripped away their flights, outriders, and special hospital wards; and in 1994, with little opposition, finally removed the need to obtain the Rulers’ assent for State laws.
Looking back, we can see how the bars of the yellow silk cage began to go up in 1983, closing in year after year.
Should we find it surprising, then, that after 25 years the tigers within should want to break free? Can we not understand that the Rulers might want to regain what has been lost?
And here is the hardest question of all: without giving up our democratic ideals, in a cynical and disloyal age, can we find a way to let our Rulers rule?
(Huzir Sulaiman writes for theatre, film, television, and newspapers.)
Comment by Kamus — February 23, 2012 @ 1:12 PM |
In trying to bring nothing but scientific FACTS and civil, sensible information to the Lynas ‘issue’ in Malaysian blogs I have learnt a lot. I have learnt that so-called “news portals’ like the Malaysian Insider are in fact one-eyed politically subversive groups who ‘moderate out’ (i.e. DENY POSTING ) virtually all FACTS/opinions that are at odds with their preciuos political agenda.
Forget about the internet facilitating the meeting of minds in these cases. Rampant censorship on a continuing and ongoing basis by little ‘tin gods’ is a sure recipe for societal CHAOS. They would prefer to incite people to riot in the streets based on FALSE ONE SIDED distortions and exaggerations that they want to pass off as REALITY.. Spin is good at making manipulated perceptions reality, but they do not suspend the laws of physics -THAT is reality..
Whilst such creatures are only thinking of their own little egos and enlarging the numbers of their political power base, they DAMAGE THE RAKYAT by KEEPING THEM in an infantile state of fear due to IMMATURE IGNORANCE.
They are in reality driving a dagger into the heart of internet freedon so that the ability of the rakyat to educate themselves and then discern the truth for themselves, is severely thwarted – I’d say more often, utterly destroyed. And don’t tell me that won’t draw government restrictions. Very foolish, the internet is global and there are a lot of scientifically savvy people who shake their heads at what’s been said about Lynas and had their factual and enlightening comments promptly DENIED – and speaking from personal experience, over and over again (I don’t give up easily). I have seen many other instances referred to in more open forums like Youtube.
Suppression of truth / lying spin / distortions of fact are serious matters as they bring stress and CHAOS to a nation’s society Being a high profile female opposition member of Parliament iis no excuse – nor is being a vocal opposition-sponsored pressure group, and especially not if you are portraying your organization as a ‘news portal’ where people expect all (civil) views and SCIENTIFIC FACTS to be posted not just political agenda complying comments.
e.g. FACT: Lynas tailings will be below 1 Becquerel per gramme (Bq/g), which is similar to the radiation level in agricultural fertiliser.- used globally.. Just try and get that posted on The malaysian Insider – I CAN’T!!!!!!
Comment by arafuraman — February 23, 2012 @ 10:33 AM |
Yes, the system kept most of us meek and weak all these years and so the ” elites” can run and steal from us and the nation. But slowly some Malaysians have woken up and found out the system was totally corrupted. The next thing the governmnet is going to do might be to shut down all social medias as we are too” immmature” to use them and can casue trouble like those Arab-Spring nations.
Comment by rc — February 23, 2012 @ 12:50 AM |